For Love is as Strong as Death
by Elizabeth7
Summary: [COMPLETED & NOW WITH 3 ADDENDUMS] SSHr Sequel to This Present Darkness. Please read This Present Darkness first otherwise this might not make sense! The story from Draco's perspective is called The Times of Restoration.
1. Prologue, Absence of Fear

Love is Strong as Death  
  
"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame." Song of Solomon 8:6  
  
  
  
"Before I go to the place from which I shall not return, To the land of darkness and the shadow of death, A land as dark as darkness itself, As the shadow of death, without any order, Where even the light is like darkness."  
  
  
  
Job 10:21-22  
  
  
  
Prologue  
  
"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." John 14:27  
  
Ten years after Voldemort had been dispatched by Severus on a moor in Raven's Hollow in the presence of a black unicorn, Hermione and Severus were now living between Hogwarts, Hermione's cottage in Hogsborough and Severus' family estate.  
  
Severus had made the decision to open up the estate again and slowly began to repair the damage that 15 to 20 years of neglect had wrought. It had not been an easy decision, as the manor held memories of neglect and loneliness for Severus, and Hermione had frankly felt tired at the mere idea of repairing the enormous place but it was a property of enormous historical value to the wizarding community apart from any sentimental consideration.  
  
Of course, Harry and Ron had made fun of Hermione for spending the Hogwarts holidays in such a mausoleum. "My Lady," they called her in pompous voices when they saw her which inevitably made her scowl at them. For one thing, she was not married to Severus; her decision, not his. Secondly, Severus was not a Lord anyway so calling her 'Lady' was ridiculous and wrong. Lastly, she did not own the estate anyway; Severus did. She merely lived there with him when he was on holidays from his teaching duties at Hogwarts.  
  
"Why don't you marry the man, 'Mione?" Ron teased her often. "He has asked you to, you know and besides, we both know that neither of you are going anywhere. You're still inseparable 10 years on!"  
  
Hermione merely sighed impatiently at the teasing and didn't deign to explain for the thousandth time that getting married to Severus couldn't make their relationship any better. Secretly, she was afraid marrying him would change something and she was happy the way their relationship was. As Severus seemed to be happy enough too, she didn't worry too much about it. However, the teasing was wearing thin.  
  
Rather inevitably, Harry had married Ginny soon after retiring from the national Quidditch team a few years ago. Ron had married Padma when they both turned 21 and they already had 3 children. The youngest, a little girl named Molly after Ron's mother, played with Harry and Ginny's little girl named Lily after Harry's mother. Lily had her mother's red hair and her father's green eyes, making her the image of Harry's mother. Needless to say, Harry was very pleased with this genetic coincidence and Hermione could already tell that regardless of how many children Harry had, Lily would always be his favourite. Ron's two eldest children were twin boys, red-haired like their father and serious like their mother in a complete personality contrast to their red-haired twin uncles, Fred and George.  
  
Severus had broached the subject of children with Hermione years ago, more to get an idea of her feelings on the matter than to put pressure on her to have any. In his heart of hearts, he would have liked to have an heir for the Snape estate and name but as he had given the idea up years before he even met Hermione, it was a disappointment he could live with if she decided against the idea. Hermione was ambivalent about children. If Severus had expressed a real desire to have them, she would not have denied him at least an heir but as he had not really brought the matter up more than once or twice over the years, she had never had to really think about it or make a decision. She supposed with wizard medicine making childbirth so painless and easy, and with Severus' wealth able to provide round-the- clock nannies to look after them there was really no objection she could think of to the idea except a personal disinclination which was purely selfish.  
  
It was Christmas and they were hosting the party at Snape Manor. Severus hadn't objected as long as he wasn't expected to change any of the guests' nappies, so they had created a Christmas wonderland in the huge dining hall and main sitting room.  
  
Hermione grinned when she saw that Harry had given Lily a baby-sized broom that only hovered just high enough off the ground for a baby not to get hurt if they fell off. Ginny looked resigned when Lily unwrapped the present and crowed in delight, immediately trying to get on it. Hermione started giggling. Lily was already showing signs of strong magical ability and everyone knew that her name was already down at Hogwarts. She was wearing overalls in Chudley Canons orange which clashed horribly with her dark red hair but they were her favourites and Ginny knew better than to argue with little Lily about her clothes.  
  
Ron's twins watched on with interest but inbetween were busy examining a new book their mother had bought them on magical creatures. Molly, a very pretty and feminine child who shared her mother's colouring and delicate features watched Lily with admiration. Molly quite adored her firey haired and natured friend but was definitely the timid one of the pair. She was sensitive and dreamy and loyal and sweet, and her brothers guarded her ferociously as they considered torturing her their own personal privilege.  
  
Of course, the grandparents were there too looking proud and bemused. The elder Molly was talking nineteen to the dozen with the other guests while Arthur joined Harry and Ron in butterbeer.  
  
Draco and Luna were there too. It never ceased to amaze Hermione that the two were still together. It was not as though they had broken up many times or even had a stormy relationship, it was just that Hermione would never have suspected either of them the type to make it in a long term relationship. They had however and were now part of Hermione's inner circle of friends, something Hermione would never have foreseen taking into account her experiences with Draco at Hogwarts. They were another pair that were teased for never having married although they'd been together almost as long as Severus and Hermione. Whenever someone asked Luna why they weren't married, Luna merely looked vaguely horrified. When the same question was asked of Draco, he just looked worried and started chewing on his fingernails. Hermione still hadn't figured it out.  
  
Uncle George was in evidence with Pandora, his wife of nearly a decade. Luna and Pandora got on like a house on fire and were soon gossiping away in a corner, leaving George to keep an eye on his 8 year old boy and 5 year old girl. Fred was there with his wife too, a woman who had been in Ravenclaw the year below Fred and George at Hogwarts. He had a 5 year old boy that often played with George's little girl. Percy had arrived a little late accompanied by his wife Penelope. They had a rather solemn little boy of eight with his father's red hair and mother's pale blue eyes.  
  
Seamus and Dean were there, having just got back from a European tour of Dean's latest art collection. Seamus had taken a break from his mediwizard career to be with him during this important tour and they both looked very relaxed.  
  
Lavendar was there with her husband that she'd met at Hogsbridge and her 5 kids, including two sets of twins. Patil was chatting with Padma out on the lawn, rocking her new baby in a stroller out in the sunshine. Her husband, a business associate of Fred and George from the joke shop was having a butterbeer with Harry. Charlie was still in Romania with the dragon colony and couldn't make it, and Bill was overseas on bank business but they'd both sent a pile of presents for Lily.  
  
Lily especially liked Charlie's present. It was a charmed, fake, dragon's egg that hatched a little rubber dragon when you picked it up and gave it a shake. The dragon could actually fly too. After a while, it crept back into its egg shell and the egg became whole again. Then you could start over. It kept Lily amused almost as long as the broom.  
  
Hermione was perfectly happy to sit in the shade and chat to whoever came by. She was feeling very contented with life on that sunshiney day. Severus was hiding in a particularly shadowy corner of the marquee, as was his wont and occasionally looking worried if a child with sticky hands came near his robes. Some of the old Hogwarts teachers were there too, and they held court with Severus watching the antics of the newer generations with amusement or worry as personality dictated.  
  
As the afternoon sunshine waned and the cake was cut, the guests began saying their goodbyes and apparating off. Eventually Harry and Ginny, Ron and Padma, Draco and Luna, and Severus and Hermione went in to the main drawing room of the manor house. It was all too familiar to Hermione now. It was the same room where the first Death Eater meeting that she had crashed had been held.  
  
"I loved the Chudley Canons birthday cake Harry," Hermione said dryly as they settled themselves, referring to Lily's birthday only a few weeks before. "Don't you think you might be brainwashing the child?"  
  
Harry gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look. "No, why?"  
  
"Maybe it was the way the cake sang the Chudley Canons cheer every time you stuck a fork in it that gives it away, Harry," she said with a grin.  
  
"Better than boring old 'happy birthday'," he argued. Hermione just rolled her eyes. Ginny sighed deeply and Hermione laughed at her.  
  
"It's no good arguing with him about it," Ginny said, shrugging helplessly and then laughed.  
  
Hermione eyed young Lily crawling around on the floor and suddenly felt a strange shiver across her shoulder blades. Would this little one see Voldemort's return and if so, would she be old enough to defend herself if she needed to? Hermione knew that Voldemort would make a bee-line for herself and Severus should he ever regain his power but would be try and hurt her family of friends too?  
  
She looked up to find Severus watching her seriously from the other side of the fireplace where he was sitting facing her. Sometimes she felt like he could read her mind. He could certainly always pick her mood. She looked away again after they exchanged an understanding look, now was not the time for serious thoughts.  
  
* * *  
  
Much later, after all the guests had gone, Hermione and Severus sat in front of the fire silently enjoying each other's company. Some nights they talked a lot, some nights they read in front of the fire, some nights they merely sat lost in their own thoughts and some nights they just made out. Hermione wasn't sure which she preferred. She grinned.  
  
"What is it? What are you thinking?" Severus' deep voice interrupted her thoughts, having noticed her amusement.  
  
"I'm thinking about making out," Hermione answered with admirable honesty and grinned at him.  
  
Severus almost smiled. "I'm glad your mind is well occupied," he said dryly but with sincerity.  
  
"My mind is always very well occupied," she said, looking at him with limpid eyes.  
  
"So I can see. Why don't you occupy it over here," Severus suggested indicating his own chair. Hermione didn't really need an invitation. She had every intention of going and sitting in his lap anyway. Once she was comfortably settled and preparing for a good snog, he said, "you were worrying about Voldemort earlier this evening, weren't you?"  
  
"How to kill a mood in one second," Hermione sighed, her warm breath brushing Severus' throat. She gazed into space for a moment. "Yes, I was." She admitted, comforted by Severus' familiar scent.  
  
Severus pressed one thin cheek against her soft hair. "What were you worrying about specifically?" He asked, his voice low.  
  
"I was thinking about Lily and how old she would be when Voldemort could rise again and whether or not she would be old enough to defend herself should she have to," Hermione said on another sigh.  
  
Severus was silent. "Lily is going to be an amazing witch. She's already showing very strong ability," Severus mused finally.  
  
"Yes. She has her father's raw ability," Hermione observed thoughtfully.  
  
Severus pulled a rude face that Hermione couldn't see. He still didn't like Potter but he had had to get used to him being around a great deal as one of Hermione's closest friends. If someone had told him during the seven years Potter had been at Hogwarts that Potter would one day sit in the main drawing room of his family home as a guest, he would have thought the person mad. Then again, if someone had told him during that same period in his life that he would one day desire Hermione and come to love her deeply for the rest of his life, he would have thought them mad too. Yet here he was and that was exactly what his life had become. 


	2. Chapter One, Outrun my Skin

Chapter One  
  
"and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle." Revelations 9:9  
  
Hermione felt strange the next day. Her friends had stayed until late, reminiscing over the past and discussing future plans and Hermione had felt fine. Now on Boxing Day, she could feel something waking up within herself. Some-thing she hadn't felt since she was a teen-ager.  
  
She stood at one of the lead pane windows set in the thick, grey, stone walls of the library. The pale winter sunlight fell over her face, leeching the natural colour out of it and making her look ghost-like. Severus, who had been coming into the room to fetch a book, stopped suddenly and watched her keenly. A slow, creeping, tingling feeling spread across his skin; he hadn't seen that look since Hermione was 17 years of age. He had a bad feeling; a very, very bad feeling.  
  
"Hermione," he hissed from across the room. "What is it?"  
  
Hermione turned to glance at him but her thoughts were obviously elsewhere. "I don't know. I feel.. restless. Like I want to be someone or something else for awhile." She rubbed her forehead with the fingertips of one hand. "I want to run." as she said it, the important of the words hit her and her eyes widened. She stared at Severus. "I want to run," she repeated to him.  
  
Fear filled Severus' eyes for a split second before he quickly hid the emotion, not wanting Hermione to get upset. "I see," he said quietly. "You know what that means?" he questioned carefully.  
  
"Yes," Hermione said simply, without emotion. "It means he's back."  
  
A muscle ticked along Severus' lean jaw as he clenched his teeth. He glanced down at the Dark Mark on his arm, still burnt black there after so long.  
  
"Do you think he'll try and call you?" Hermione asked, seeing his look.  
  
"I don't know," Severus said honestly, his voice low.  
  
"Bastard," Hermione muttered looking out of the window again, her dark grey eyes burning with anger.  
  
"You mustn't transform Hermione," Severus said, stalking purposefully across the room towards her. He towered over her, a trick he employed from his years of teaching Hogwarts students.  
  
"I wouldn't do it on purpose," Hermione replied, making an effort not to step away from him as she tended to do automatically when he was in one of his autocratic moods.  
  
"You're older now. You should be able to control it," he said, trying to sound reasonable but merely sounding dictatorial which was apt to happen when he was afraid.  
  
"Yes," Hermione sighed. "Trouble is, I don't want to control it. I want to run," Hermione said wistfully, looking out on the snow covered grounds. She smiled; it looked like a winter fairyland out there. She never got sick of the view.  
  
"I'd lock you in a room if I had to," he hissed, his eyes narrowing.  
  
Hermione looked up at him from under her hair. "You would not!" she contradicted him flatly. "Besides, even if you did I'd seduce you into letting me out again," she laughed. It was one of Hermione's peculiar traits that Severus was never able to intimidate her when he frankly terrified everyone else.  
  
"Hermione," he said warningly.  
  
"Oh, stop being so bossy," she said and wound her arms around his middle, resting her head on his chest. Severus often wished she wouldn't do that. It made him think all sorts of inappropriate thoughts for that time of day. But Hermione's face as she looked out the window was serious and her thoughts were far away in the Dark Forest.  
  
* * *  
  
For all his bossiness, Hermione thought later that night, Severus could be very stupidly trusting. While he was distracted by some hot lead on the research he was doing, Hermione was able to sneak out of the manor very easily. The Snape Manor backed onto the opposite side of the Dark Forest to the Hogwarts side. Once she reached the perimeter of the Snape Manor grounds on one side, she was only a short distance from its outskirts.  
  
The moon was high in the clear night sky and shone bright silver. She shivered slightly. She knew it would not be long before the transformation overtook her and sure enough, as soon as her feet touched the moist earth under the canopy she found herself running on four ebony hooves.  
  
Severus meanwhile had finally retired from his studies for the night only to discover that Hermione was not in their bed and was no-where to be found in the manor. A sick feeling started in his stomach. The events of 10 years ago were coming back to him clearly once again; the panic of knowing Hermione has transformed and that Voldemort would give almost everything to have her destroyed.  
  
He quickly did a location spell over the manor and grounds. No trace of her. He swore violently and then did another over the Dark Forest. He got something only faintly of Hermione which meant she was in her animagus state. Quickly he transformed into his raven animagus and flew out over the forest.  
  
It was the early hours of the morning before he found the black unicorn running with eerie silence through the undergrowth. Its motion was a fluid as water and its muscles rippled under a coat so black and shiny it looked like obsidian and reflected moonlight the way water under a clear night sky does. The raven followed it until it eventually stopped and pawed the ground only a 100 metres or so from a pixie gathering in a clearing. It almost seemed to be watching them curiously. There were maybe a dozen pixies seated around a fire smoking some kind of earthern pipes and listening to some odd music being played by instruments that Severus had never seen before. It was obviously a peaceful and harmless gathering. The unicorn snorted softly and moved away to a more shadowy part of the forest.  
  
Severus noted that the black unicorn was careful not to be seen more than it could help. He knew trying to persuade her to change back was pointless, each time he'd tried it 10 years ago the black unicorn had shied and run off. His only intention was to keep her in his sights to make sure no harm came to her before she transformed back at dawn.  
  
Time was deceptive in the Dark Forest, Severus noted as he flew behind the galloping unicorn later that night. It could have been one hundred years since he started following the unicorn though the forest or it could have been one minute. He felt no weariness in his wings but he felt like he was flying underwater.  
  
Eventually, the unicorn stopped and knelt beside a shallow stream. One firey red and gold eye fixed upon the raven perched in the tree above it. "She knew I was here all the time," he thought distantly.  
  
He blinked and Hermione was sitting by the stream instead, looking away from him. He flew down and perched on her shoulder. She reached up and stroked the shiny dark feathers of his wing before he flew a few metres away and transformed himself.  
  
Severus had taken his bearings before flying down to her and knew they were a short walk from Hogsmeade. He waited until she got up from beside the stream and then silently led them through the forest in the direction of the Three Broomsticks. Small patches of snow had made it onto the forest floor and it was cold but Hermione didn't feel it. Severus didn't talk. He knew that Hermione was almost more unicorn than human just after transforming.  
  
Rosmerta nodded to them as they stepped into the fireplace. As soon as they got home Severus made Hermione take a hot bath. He sat beside her as she stared silently into space, soaking and getting warm. Eventually her eyes focused on him. "Get in, you look cold," she said quietly.  
  
His fingernails were blue and even the tips of his long, white fingers were blue too. "You're not going to distract me that way," he said wryly, raising his dark eyebrows.  
  
"Oh, like I think you're not going to yell at me anyway," Hermione said sarcastically and looked sulky, suddenly her fully human self again.  
  
Severus felt relieved. He didn't like the Hermione that was more unicorn than human - it was eerie. He quickly stripped off and got into the hot water. "Ow! It's hot!" he complained.  
  
"I told you it was too hot," Hermione said, still sulky.  
  
"You have been out in the Dark Forest all night!" Severus began lecturing again.  
  
Hermione made a rude noise then snuggled against Severus. If he was going to give her a hard time anyway, at least she could put him off the idea for a while.  
  
"I knew you were going to do that," Severus said, sounding resigned as her hands wandered. Hermione smiled as she felt his response.  
  
* * *  
  
Hermione got lectured anyway, as she knew she would. It was just quite some hours later.  
  
"Do I have to lock you in a room?" Severus asked pointedly, drumming his long, beautiful fingers on the desk in the library.  
  
"Are you going to lock me up in the dungeons like an evil, wicked wizard in a fairy-tale?" Hermione mocked trying not to grin and failing.  
  
"Hermione! You're not being serious!" He said, his pale lips thinning.  
  
"Oh, you noticed that huh?" She said cheerfully.  
  
"Will you stop behaving like a bratty school kid?" he said with a dark frown.  
  
"Only if you stop behaving like a damn school teacher. You'll put me off you in a minute. I didn't like you when you were my school teacher," Hermione reminded him.  
  
"I didn't like you when you were a bratty, buck-toothed school kid either but that's beside the point!" Severus snarled.  
  
"Oh, let's get personal now, why don't we?" Hermione said, looking offended. "Besides, I was never a brat."  
  
"Hermione," Severus said warningly, looking at the end of his patience, "we need to sort this out. I can't have you transforming like that. It makes you far too vulnerable. If Voldemort is rising again - and you starting to transform again is a pretty good indication that he is - he is going to hunt you down as his first priority. I can't have you sneaking out and transforming every time you get the urge to."  
  
Hermione sighed deeply and played with her hair. "Well, I can't think of anything," she said peevishly.  
  
"No. That's because you don't want to, not because you can't," Severus said, getting up to pace. Severus pacing was a bad sign, Hermione knew. It meant he wasn't going to be dissuaded.  
  
"Maybe we need to speak to Dumbledore," Hermione said finally. Watching Severus pace was making her tired and she was tired already.  
  
He turned his lean form round to face her and examined her with his dark, deep-set eyes. "Yes," he agreed seriously and took some floo powder off the mantel. 


	3. Chapter Two, There's a Dark Cloud Moving...

Chapter Two  
  
"I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me." Ezekial 3:17  
  
Dumbledore was pleased to see them both when they arrived in his office, although he had seen them only the previous day at the Christmas party at the Manor.  
  
Dumbledore looked at Hermione keenly. "Let me guess, my dear. You recently transformed again, didn't you?"  
  
"How did you know?" Severus hissed, turning suddenly on the tall, white- haired, old man. "Have you got information that you've been keeping from us?" Anger was burning in the depths of Severus' black eyes. He would not take kindly to finding out information on Voldemort had been kept from him when it could involve Hermione in life-threatening danger.  
  
"Calm down, Severus. I only received information just this morning and was about to owl you both when you arrived," Dumbledore replied calmly. "Take a seat," he offered.  
  
Severus relaxed slightly and sprawled in one of the chairs opposite Dumbledore's desk, his long thin legs stretched out before him. Hermione sat next to him.  
  
"What have you heard?" Severus rasped. Hermione looked at him strangely. It had been years since she'd heard that particular tone in Severus' voice.  
  
"A strange incident in the northern regions. The Northern Lights have been showing strange, aberrant phenomena all through last night," Dumbledore said, pressing his fingertips together lightly and frowning slightly in thought.  
  
"Aberrant?" Severus repeated sharply.  
  
"Yes. As you know, the Aurora Borealis is slightly more common in Spring and Fall, and coincides with increased sunspot activity. Also, its most common colour is a yellow-green. Of course, it can appear all year round and in almost any colour of the rainbow. However, pure red Auroras are very, very rare indeed. Now lately, there has been very little sunspot activity at all. Sunspots tend to peak in an approximate 11 year cycle and we are well out of a peak period*. Last night there was a static, pure red Aurora in the extreme North in the dead of Winter. To be honest, my spies are not even sure it really was the Aurora Borealis for the simple reason that the light did not move although it held a fairly typical sheet- like formation of the Aurora Borealis," Dumbledore explained carefully.  
  
Hermione listened intently. She'd never heard anything like this. She glanced over at Severus. His colorless hands were gripping the armrests of the chair and his knuckles were white.  
  
"How do you connect this occurrence with Voldemort?" Severus asked, his eyes narrowed in his pale face.  
  
"We couldn't, at that stage. That's why I was going to owl you. I knew if it was Voldemort that young Hermione would give us our confirmation and so she has," Dumbledore said compassionately, smiling kindly at her.  
  
"What instructions have you given your spies?" Severus asked tensely.  
  
"To stay away from that region until we can get a party of experienced Aurors together to investigate further," Dumbledore said quietly. "They are able to monitor the region with powerful telescopic charms but that's all I want anyone to do at this stage."  
  
"Who are you thinking of making part of this party?" Hermione asked seriously.  
  
"I think the usual people that I know I can trust plus some senior Aurors from the Ministry. Remus naturally, and some of our Hogwarts teachers including Hagrid," Dumbledore replied.  
  
"What about us?" Hermione said eagerly, leaning forward in her chair.  
  
"No! No way, Hermione. You're not setting foot outside of England until this is sorted out!" Severus said in a voice like a whip cracking. Hermione visibly jumped and looked at Severus with wide eyes.  
  
"Don't tell me what I can and can't do!" Hermione said, recovering quickly and looking furious.  
  
Here we go, Dumbledore thought, trying to suppress a smile.  
  
"You must be mad, Hermione!" Severus hissed at her. "Voldemort would love nothing better than for you to walk straight into his lair. Are you going to be stupid enough to hand yourself to him on a platter after everything that happened 10 years ago?"  
  
"Who said anything about handing myself over? I want to go there to defeat him once and for all!" she said, a light kindling in the dark grey eyes.  
  
"The best thing you can do for everybody is stay right here!" Severus snapped.  
  
"You know, I thought you had more faith in me than that. I'm really insulted that you seem to think I'm so useless!" Hermione said angrily.  
  
"I never said you were useless," Severus said through clenched teeth. "I'm trying to protect you!"  
  
"I don't need protecting! I'm 28 years old!" Hermione yelled back.  
  
"Severus! Hermione!" Dumbledore interrupted when he saw Severus take another breath. "This is a moot point right now. There may be no need to take a party North. It may well be that Voldemort will come back to his home turf if he has the strength." Hermione and Severus continued to glare at each other from their respective chairs. Dumbledore felt like sighing but was too well schooled in the art of tact to do so. "Go back to the Manor for now. Any further reports I get, I will send on to you immediately," he promised.  
  
* * *  
  
Hermione refused to speak to Severus for the rest of the day. She kept an anxious eye out for owls, hoping for further reports.  
  
Severus brooded in the library in front of the fire. He was terrified although he wasn't about to admit it to anyone. He had never cared about his life before, in fact he had never really cared about anything much but his own academic pursuits. Now he cared too much about Hermione and he was paying the price for it in fear. If he thought he had been afraid for her 10 years ago, it was nothing to how he felt now. Time had bonded them so closely together that if something happened to her, he would feel like he had lost some vital part of himself. He sneered at himself when he realized how pathetically cheesy that sounded then shuddered with a kind of despair when he realized how deeply true it was. Hermione was probably the only truly good thing that had ever happened to him in his life. He had not thought about suicide in a decade. He did not want to go back to that place.  
  
Hermione came sulkily into the library late that night to find Severus pacing in front of a dying fire, his brow deeply furrowed. Her heart smote her when she saw how worried he looked and she went straight up to him and put her arms around him.  
  
"You know, all this worrying and pacing is not going to achieve anything but to wear out your newly restored Persian rugs," Hermione teased gently. He rested one hollow cheek against her hair. "And you didn't eat dinner," she added bossily. Severus was silent. "The Ministry will be in an uproar when I go back to work," Hermione observed, looking down into the fire and still hanging onto him.  
  
Severus wound one hand into her soft, thick hair feeling comforted by its familiar texture and the sensible, down-to-earth tones of her voice.  
  
Suddenly, Severus let go of her and grabbed his left forearm and hissed with pain. Hermione drew her breath in sharply and stared at him in horror. She looked at the Dark Mark on his forearm that he was clutching. It had turned red just around the edges. Hermione swore in a way that Severus himself would have been proud of. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" She wanted to hit something and her eyes filled with tears.  
  
"Hermione, it's alright. It's not that bad, I just wasn't expecting it. It's quite weak compared to what it felt like 10 years ago," he said through teeth clenched in pain.  
  
Hermione had learnt some basic wizard medical practices because her career meant she worked with dangerous potions and charms in a laboratory setting and needed some rudimentary skills in case of accidents. She quickly went to their stores of medical potions and got a pain killer potion and carefully measured the correct dose. She brought it back to him immediately and made him drink it. The potion worked quickly and he was immediately sleepy and he sat down in a chair in front of the fire to doze.  
  
"You didn't get an owl this time," Hermione said quietly, gently stroking his arm as he nodded off.  
  
He blinked. "No," he said, waking up slightly. "I hardly think he wants me at his Death Eater meetings after I attacked him last time" he said darkly with an undertone of apprehension.  
  
"But why would your mark burn unless Voldemort wanted you at the meetings?" Hermione asked curiously, her grey eyes serious in the firelight.  
  
"Anyone with who has a mark would have felt it burn tonight. The spell that binds us to Voldemort is unbreakable even when Death Eaters defect. It didn't happen very often of course because it meant an automatic death sentence. Only my own death would prevent my arm burning when Voldemort calls his Death Eaters. It's actually a flaw in Voldemort's plan, as it turns out," Severus observed tiredly. "He didn't plan for any defectors to be still alive to know when he's active. I'm sure we will hear from Draco soon that his mark was burning tonight too." Severus shifted restlessly in his chair. "We don't have anyone who can infiltrate those meetings now."  
  
"The invisibility cloak is too dangerous," Hermione commented distractedly.  
  
Severus' heart gave a sudden thump as he remembered with unexpected clarity when Hermione had been discovered at the last Death Eater meeting before Voldemort went back into hiding. He never wanted to live through another moment like that again. "Yes!" he hissed, suddenly wide-awake. "That must never be used again!"  
  
"No," Hermione agreed, still deep in thought and unaware of his agitation. "If Voldemort is in the deep North, why would he be sending messages to his Death Eaters anyway? I suppose they could apparate to him but they wouldn't be able to go to the Polar region without significant preparation even just for a meeting,"  
  
"They're all in Azkabahn anyway. None of them have been let out. Some of them had the Kiss administered too. No, it doesn't make sense," Severus said, shaking his head.  
  
"Maybe there were Death Eaters who didn't go to those meetings - some who were part of an inner circle who weren't there that night on the moors," Hermione postulated. "You said yourself once that you didn't know who they all were."  
  
"No but I knew most of them and I was sure we got them all. Names that I couldn't provide, Draco provided from his parent's parchments from the secret Dark Arts chamber in their house," Severus said, deeply disturbed at the idea that there may be Death Eaters still free.  
  
"Not that Voldemort may know that all his Death Eaters were caught. He disappeared into vapour that night on the moors and vanished very quickly. Unless he's managed to recruit spies on the continent, how would he know that they're all in Azkabahn?" Hermione said thoughtfully.  
  
"That's true," Severus said, relaxing slightly. "He may be trying to call them to him without realizing that none of them can go."  
  
"We just don't know," Hermione said, shaking her head and sighing. "We just know so little, it frightens me." She put her smooth cheek against Severus' arm while he gradually went back to sleep under the effects of the potion.  
  
*Information sourced from 


	4. Chapter Three, I Won't Be Made Useless

Chapter Three  
  
"Plead my cause with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me." Psalm 31:1  
  
Hermione unbuttoned her thick winter coat as she stepped inside the Ministry. The castle was magically heated throughout but apparating there was freezing work in mid-Winter.  
  
Everyone should have looked relaxed and cheerful after the Christmas break but the mood was sombre as she made her way to the magical laboratories. She had been recently promoted to manager of one of the branches of the Magical Research and Development section, the one that dealt with the development of new tools for Aurors to use against the Dark Arts. It looked like all the hard work she had done in the past 5 or so years would be soon put to use against Voldemort.  
  
She was the first to arrive as per usual and she began setting up the equipment as she waited for her team to arrive. She checked on the experiments that had been left to run over Christmas and smiled at the positive results that most of them were showing. I think we're finally ready, she thought peering into a gently simmering cauldron.  
  
"Morning boss," Glinda, one of her team called out as she came into the lab.  
  
"Ewwww! Don't call me boss! You know I hate that," Hermione said, wincing.  
  
Glinda grinned at her. "I suppose you've heard all the talk about Voldemort rising again, haven't you?" she asked Hermione.  
  
"Yes, we'd heard about it. It looks like all our hard work may be put to good use sooner that we would have liked," Hermione commented.  
  
Suddenly the Head of Magical Research and Development's head popped up in the fireplace. "Miss Granger, can I see you in my office straight away? I need an urgent up-date on the projects you and your team are currently working on," she said, swiveling her head round to see Hermione on one side of the room.  
  
"I'll be there in 5 seconds," Hermione replied with a smile and after exchanging a glance with Glinda, quickly apparated outside the door of her superior and went in after knocking.  
  
"Ah good, take a seat Hermione," the rather wild looking, middle-aged redhead said kindly. She peered at Hermione through her thick glasses. "Now, I understand your team have a set of tools nearly ready that our Aurors could use effectively against any Dark Arts attacks on the wizarding community?"  
  
"Yes, that's right Wanda. Most of them are ready for the Aurors to trial out in the field. Some Aurors have already been trialing them for quite some time in a controlled environment and we seem to have worked out all the bugs that we initially encountered. The potion we've been working on probably needs another week or so of testing but the charms are all ready for use," Hermione explained.  
  
"Excellent, excellent. The Minister will be pleased. As you would know by now, the timing of these tools being ready now is very fortuitous. Apparently the Minister had confirmation as early as Boxing Day that Voldemort is on the move again," Wanda said, playing nervously with the mass of paper scattered messily over her desk.  
  
"Yes. I take it the Aurors are preparing for a strike?" Hermione said conversationally, relieved that Wanda seemed unaware that the confirmation of Voldemort's reappearance came from Hermione herself.  
  
"They are on special alert of course, yes," Wanda confirmed.  
  
"Is there any news of a mission?" Hermione asked with feigned casualness.  
  
"No, not yet. We have yet to be informed of a position for Voldemort but the whole Ministry is on high alert," Wanda said, now playing with the myriad of beads around her neck.  
  
Hermione merely nodded. She knew more than most of the Ministry, in that case. She had no doubt that Voldemort had located himself in the extreme North. It was a safe place for him to regain his strength. Neither the wizarding world nor Muggles visited or populated that part of the world in great numbers. He could remain undetected for as long as he wished. "Well, I had best get back to work if these projects are now urgent," Hermione said, getting up.  
  
"Yes, yes. Report back to me as regularly as you think sensible regarding progress," Wanda said, ushering Hermione out of the door. As she left, Hermione saw the manager of another section in Magical Research and Development waiting to speak to Wanda. She smiled and nodded to him, and then apparated back to her lab.  
  
"This place is going beserk," Hermione commented to Padma over lunch. The two often met up in the dining hall at lunchtime. Padma had just been promoted to manager of her section in the Muggle Relations Department too. "I imagine your section is the busiest in your Department at the moment," she added.  
  
Padma ran the section that took care of cleaning up after Dark Arts incidents in the Muggle community. Unlike Arthur Weasley who worked in the section that did the day-to-day cleaning up of magical accidents in the Muggle community, Padma's team was specialized in Dark Arts incidents only.  
  
"You bet," Padma said with feeling, taking a bite of her roast beef and mashed potatoes. The lunch appeared down the center of all of the tables in a similar fashion to the dining hall at Hogwarts. "Everyone is saying that there is confirmation that Voldemort is active again but no-one is saying exactly what that proof is."  
  
"Maybe the Ministry weren't the ones who got confirmation and they don't know themselves," Hermione postulated, feeling guilty for hiding the truth from a good friend.  
  
"Hrm. It all seems strange to me. What's Severus doing with himself at the moment?" Padma asked, changing the subject as Hermione appeared to have no more information than she did herself.  
  
"Oh, he's at the Manor. You know what teachers are like. They spend half their lives on holiday," Hermione said with a grin.  
  
"Ain't that the truth? I almost wish I had done teaching now myself. I was considering it but putting up with bratty teenagers isn't my idea of a great work day," Padma said.  
  
"I don't think it's Severus' idea of a good work day either," Hermione said, throwing back her head and laughing. "Wasn't he a bastard to all of us when we were at Hogwarts?"  
  
"Yeah, and he particularly disliked you as I recall. Don't things change?" she teased. "You know, if you married the man, he'd be perfectly happy for you to sit around in the Manor all day playing Lady," she added, pointing a solid silver fork at Hermione.  
  
"What would I do? Gather dust and cobwebs?" Hermione said with a shrug, forking some mashed potato and gravy into her mouth.  
  
"You could make it your full-time job to restore and run the estate," Padma suggested, not very seriously as she herself would not contemplate doing something like that either.  
  
"Nah. I have no nesting instinct. He would need a different type of woman for that," Hermione said honestly with a grin.  
  
"He's not going anywhere. You're stuck with that one for life," Padma said flatly, then grinned.  
  
"He'd better not go anywhere!" Hermione said, then laughed again.  
  
When Hermione got back to the lab she began planning out some new charms and potions she wanted to develop for the Aurors. The charms would need to stand up to extreme weather conditions from the look of it and although there were some good charms for that already, they really needed more.  
  
Jinty, one of Hermione's favourite young Aurors, came into the lab that afternoon. "Wanda tells me that you're nearly ready for us," she said cheerfully, her chestnut chair gleaming under the bright lab lights.  
  
"Yes, try this," Hermione said and showed Jinty one of the completed charms. Jinty was a quick study and got it almost right the very first time she tried it. "I can see why they recruited you straight out of Auror School for special missions," Hermione said with a grin.  
  
"Actually, it was yours truly who had the brains to recruit her," Ron said, coming through the lab door looking relaxed. Ron was now a Senior Auror with his own special assignments team of which Jinty was a member.  
  
"Trust you to take the credit," Hermione joked.  
  
"Are the new tools nearly ready?" Ron asked more seriously. He was anxious to have anything that may aid and protect his team. He knew it wasn't long before they all were sent on a dangerous mission.  
  
"I was just teaching Jinty the first of them. She's been trialing the different stages for me but I've just given her the completed charm that has all the bugs worked out of it," Hermione explained, watching Jinty practice it with narrow-eyed concentration. "Ah! Well done, Jinty!" she exclaimed as the Auror got it completely right for the first time.  
  
Ron grinned. "Hermione, that is fucking brilliant! I knew you could do it!" he enthused.  
  
"Me and my genius team," Hermione demurred, turning to her team with a quick smile.  
  
"Yep, that's us! Fucking brilliant geniuses," a scraggy, skinny young man with freckles and buck teeth replied with a grin. Jinty, who had been fending off invitations for dates from the young man for quite a while, snorted eloquently but continued practicing without missing a beat.  
  
"Well, if you want to bring your team up tomorrow, we'll put them through their paces getting these new charms right. The potion will need a few more days work but then they can have that too," Hermione said to Ron.  
  
He looked very pleased indeed. "Done! We'll be here. Are you going back to the Manor tonight?" Ron asked.  
  
"Yes. Severus is still on leave from Hogwarts so we'll be there for a few more weeks," Hermione replied, still watching Jinty carefully.  
  
"Good. Can I bring Padma around after dinner time? Say around 8pm? There are some things I'd like to discuss with yourself and Severus," Ron asked with contrived casualness.  
  
"I will never know how you managed to become an Auror when you are such a terrible actor Ron," Hermione said with amusement.  
  
"It's the hot-headedness. The Ministry decided we could use it," Jinty kidded, still practicing.  
  
Ron gave Jinty a squinty eyed look but ignored her comment. "Why would I be lying?" he asked Hermione, trying and failing to look innocent. "We do want to discuss some things with you and Severus."  
  
"Hrm. I bet there's more to it than that but never mind. We'll see you both at 8pm. I'd invite you for dinner but I don't want to do that without checking with Severus first. He might be up to his armpits in some disgusting new potion and not want to stop for dinner," Hermione said.  
  
"Fair enough. 8pm it is," Ron said cheerfully. "See you both then. C'mon Jinty. You can teach that to the rest of the team this afternoon. I think you've got it now," he added to the tall, pretty Auror.  
  
Hermione waved them off and checked her watch. It was after 5pm and she was beat. "Okay guys, it's after five. Pack up and let's go home for the day. Voldemort is not going to show up in London tonight!" she said to her team. Ten minutes later, they were out of the door. 


	5. Chapter Four, Neither Timid Nor Tame

Chapter Four  
  
"Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Proverbs 27:17  
  
At 8pm that night, Hermione and Severus, and Ron and Padma were in one of the smaller sitting rooms of the Manor.  
  
"I hope you don't mind but I asked Harry and Ginny, and Draco and Luna to drop by too," Ron said, sipping some very fine Muggle brandy.  
  
"I think we're being ganged up upon," Hermione commented to Severus.  
  
"Definitely," Severus said, a very sardonic expression on his face.  
  
A short while later, Harry and Ginny stepped out of the fireplace followed soon after by Draco and Luna. A House Elf brought them some brandy too.  
  
"Okay, out with it," Hermione said, once they were settled.  
  
Ron and Harry glanced at each other. "Well," Harry began. "As you know the Ministry has received confirmation that Voldemort is on the move again and last time he was active," he paused and glanced at Ginny. She nodded slightly in encouragement at him. "Well, last time he was active was when Hermione kept transforming into a black unicorn. Not that we were told this until much later," he added pointedly. Severus scowled and Hermione merely raised her eyebrows. "So, if Voldemort is active again then won't Hermione be in danger of transforming once more?" he finally asked.  
  
"Yeah, and if she does, won't that be very dangerous? We all know that she will be Voldemort's first target," Ron butted in.  
  
Hermione heard Severus' sharp intake of breath and saw his fingers tighten on the armrests of his chair, a sure and familiar indication of tension. "I've told her that myself," Severus said harshly. "But she won't listen to me."  
  
"He wants to lock me in a room, for goodness sake!" Hermione said, rolling her eyes.  
  
"Only if you won't do anything to help yourself!" he snarled back, getting up suddenly to pace. Ginny watched him with wide, concerned eyes.  
  
Hermione shook her head at his rigid back and turned back to her friends. "I don't know what to do to prevent it," she said with a shrug.  
  
"Don't go to the Dark Forest," Severus said, turning around sharply, his robe billowing darkly around him.  
  
"Try telling me that when I'm about to transform," Hermione sighed.  
  
"I can see why you want to lock her in a room," Draco said wryly to Severus.  
  
"Maybe you need to move right away from the Dark Forest, Hermione," Ginny suggested sensibly.  
  
"How? The wizarding world in England is built pretty much around the perimeter of the Dark Forest. There are very few parts of it that are not just a short distance away from it," Hermione reasoned.  
  
"Raven's Hollow was a good distance away, so there must be other small towns like it," Padma argued.  
  
"What about my work at the Ministry?" Hermione said.  
  
"Yeah and it's increasingly important work too. Hermione is needed there right now," Ron agreed reluctantly.  
  
"What's to prevent her setting up a lab in another location?" Harry said seriously, his bright green eyes picking up the firelight. "The Ministry won't object. It's easy enough for people to apparate anywhere in England."  
  
"It's also easy enough for Hermione to apparate into the Dark Forest when she feels the pull to transform," Severus said flatly.  
  
That silenced the others. "There doesn't seem to be a solution," Luna observed pensively.  
  
"Unless Severus locks her in a room," Ron joked weakly.  
  
"And she won't tell me when she is feeling that pull either so that probably wouldn't work anyway - unless I just never let her out," Severus said, only half-jesting.  
  
"I guess this is how Remus feels," Hermione sighed.  
  
"Remus had his friends to help him and we'll find a way to help you too," Ginny said kindly.  
  
"What I want to know is why I have such trouble controlling when I transform. All the other animagi choose when they transform in and out of their animal form. I don't seem to have that choice," Hermione pondered aloud.  
  
"Perhaps the part of you that is the black unicorn only wakes up when there is real evil around," Padma suggested intelligently, as was her predisposition.  
  
Severus nodded silently. That sounded perfectly feasible to him.  
  
"But then, why can't I choose not to transform either?" Hermione asked Padma seriously.  
  
"I'm not sure. Perhaps the will to defeat evil is stronger in you than your desire to stay out of any kind of danger. It could be purely subconscious," she postulated, displaying her knowledge of Muggle psychology which had made up part of her studies at Hogsbridge.  
  
"Or it could be part of her destiny," Harry said gravely. "Perhaps the part of her that is the black unicorn must fulfill its nature at some stage and defeat some great evil."  
  
"Regardless of the cost?" Severus hissed, his dark eyes flashing with sudden fury and pinning Harry with a dark glare.  
  
"It's only a theory, Severus. I'm not saying she shouldn't be protected and prevented from transforming if we can do it. The bottom line is, we really just don't know. Black unicorns are too rare for anyone to have built up much of an understanding of the creatures," Harry said calmly.  
  
"I don't think Hermione should be allowed to accompany any of the Auror missions that will be coming up in the near future," Ron said in a low voice, knowing how Hermione would react.  
  
"Definitely not!" Severus said sharply, before Hermione even had a chance to open her mouth.  
  
"Er.. okay daddy!" Hermione said pointedly to Severus, then glared at Ron.  
  
"I am not being dictatorial just for the sake of it Hermione. Everyone here would agree with myself and Ron, I imagine. It is ridiculously dangerous for you to go on any of the fact-finding Auror missions," Severus argued.  
  
"That will be up to the Ministry. What happens if something goes wrong with one of the new Auror tools I've developed?" Hermione disputed.  
  
"We'll make sure a senior member of your team is available for us Hermione," Ron said quietly.  
  
Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh, so all of this has already been decided?" Hermione asked Ron, her eyes narrowed. Severus knew that look all too well and he tensed, ready for explosions.  
  
"Dumbledore has already been in contact with the Minister for Magic and told him not to let you go on any of the Auror missions for your own personal safety, Hermione," Ron said. "Dumbledore didn't give any details but you know the Minister will listen to Dumbledore."  
  
"So this is really what this evening was all about?" Hermione said grimly, suddenly getting up. Severus fought the urge to duck. Hermione tended to throw things in a mood like this. She took some floo powder off the mantel.  
  
"Where are you going?" Severus demanded, getting up as she stepped into the flames and disappeared. He swore viciously while the others watched him with wide eyes.  
  
Hermione stepped out into Dumbledore's office.  
  
"Ah, Hermione! How lovely to see you," Dumbledore said, his pale blue eyes twinkling.  
  
"What did you tell the Minister?" Hermione said angrily without preamble.  
  
"I told him not to let you go on any missions. You know you mustn't do that Hermione," he said kindly, offering her a seat.  
  
Hermione sat down stiffly. "I want to go," she said, trying to sound calm and merely sounding uptight.  
  
"I know, my dear but it's too dangerous for you. We can't lose the most brilliant defense against the dark arts research and development witch the Ministry has ever had now, can we?" he said calmly.  
  
"I don't understand why other people are making my decisions for me as though I'm not an adult," Hermione said tightly.  
  
"Because we care about you and we know you too well. You would risk everything to snuff out evil Hermione, even your own human nature. Severus would never forgive me if I allowed you to do that and I would never forgive myself," he said with a touch of sadness that Hermione had never seen on the old wizard's face before.  
  
"I still don't think any of you have the right to do it," Hermione said, more gently.  
  
"We don't have the right, no but we do have the responsibility," Dumbledore replied tranquilly.  
  
"That's splitting hairs," Hermione pointed out.  
  
"Sometimes as an adult you have to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Life is not so black and white, Hermione. Look at your own love for Severus. Would you have thought as a young adolescent that you could ever have loved a former Death Eater?" he said kindly.  
  
"No," Hermione muttered truthfully.  
  
"But you found out that the evil he was involved in was mitigated by his misled good intentions and the influence of those that he needed love from. What you thought was completely wrong suddenly became understandable, yes? And from understanding eventually came love. Now, people are taking away your rights because they love you, not otherwise. Suddenly, an action that is wrong becomes mitigated by the good intentions of those that love you and want to protect you," Dumbledore explained compassionately.  
  
Suddenly, Severus stepped through the fireplace. "I guessed you'd come straight here," he said resignedly.  
  
"Hermione and I were just having a little chat," Dumbledore said cheerfully, when Hermione was silent. "Go home to your friends now, Hermione and remember they are your friends, not your enemies."  
  
Hermione got up and without a word to either of them, stepped into the fire and went back to the Manor. When she got back, the others were getting ready to leave.  
  
"Where's Severus?" Ginny asked with concern.  
  
"With Dumbledore," Hermione said briefly, helping her with her coat.  
  
They said a subdued goodbye and floo-ed off. Hermione went to her study which was in a private suite of rooms that Severus had given her for her own use. One unspoken and unbroken rule was that one never disturbed the other in their study. They were both creatures that needed solitude on a regular basis and their studies were completely private.  
  
It was the early hours of the morning before Hermione crawled into bed beside a sleeping Severus. She curled up against him loving his familiar scent and the smooth texture of the skin of his torso, and finding it comforting even in the midst of their disagreement. Severus, who was a light sleeper at the best of times, woke up and slid one hand down her bare arm. Finally, he would get some peaceful sleep that night. 


	6. Chapter Five, I'm Blending, I'm Blurring...

Chapter Five  
  
"in the secret places doth he murder the innocent" Psalm 10:8  
  
Hermione had been living in the Snape Manor on and off for 10 years and still did not know her way around it. There were still wings that she had not even been in. To her surprise, Severus was the same even though he'd grown up there.  
  
"Why have you never explored this place fully?" Hermione had asked him on one of their first stays in the Manor during the early stages of its restoration.  
  
His face had closed over instantly. "I never really liked this place. Apart from that, I was always under the supervision of nannies until I went to Hogwarts and they never let me do much. Once I got to Hogwarts, I spent little time here even during school holidays," he had said, his voice with an undercurrent of tension.  
  
Hermione guessed quite accurately that he had also been very unhappy during any time he'd spent there growing up. Neglect and the perfectionistic strictness of his parents had marred his memories of the place. "Did your parents drag you off on boring ski-ing trips during the holidays?" she had teased.  
  
"No, I got left at Hogwarts a lot. My parents were away on Death Eater business more often than not," he had explained without self-pity.  
  
Hermione had sighed deeply. Her family life had been awful in most respects but at least she went home for school holidays. She had gone over to him and put her arms around his lean waist. "No wonder you have no real passion for this place," she had said compassionately.  
  
He had stroked the thick, shining hair with one pale hand, his deep-set eyes glowing with repressed emotion. "A house isn't a home without a loving presence in it," he had observed quietly.  
  
She had nodded, her face pressed against his dark robes. "No," she had said and sighed again.  
  
That conversation she'd had with Severus had stayed with her for a decade but it wasn't until recently that she thought to ask Hermatica and Severus- the-first about it. "You know, he really doesn't know a great deal about this place," she had remarked to the two in the portrait one day. Hermatica and Severus-the-first exchanged meaningful glances. "What?" Hermione asked suspiciously.  
  
The two were silent for a moment longer, then suddenly seemed to come to a mutual decision via eye contact alone. "He knows nothing really about this place," Severus-the-first said significantly.  
  
"Oh?" Hermione said with raised eyebrows. "Would you care to inform me?"  
  
"Meet us in the West Wing, near the top of the staircase. We'll be in the rural landscape there," Severus-the-first replied.  
  
With a nod, Hermione got up and went directly there. Sure enough, they were waiting for her. The staircase ended in a long hallway that went in both directions. One way led into the West Wing that was never used and the other way went to the main foyer section in the middle of the Manor. Hermatica and Severus-the-first led Hermione deep into the West Wing via a long and winding corridor. It was eerie there and had a bad atmosphere. The stone work was slightly damp, the timber work was rotting, the tapestries and brocades were faded and had holes in them, there were mice scampering along the edges of the corridor, spiders had left huge webs hanging like curtains in the corners and there was not enough light. Not only did it feel desolate but it also had that brooding malevolence that some long deserted places had. As though a great evil had been committed there and it had poisoned the atmosphere too much for anything as healthy as sunlight or laughter to exist in it.  
  
"Lumos," Hermione whispered, holding her wand high as the light got less.  
  
Hermatica and Severus-the-first passed silently from frame to frame. The paintings had darkened with age to such an extent that it was almost impossible to see what the painting were of. All Hermione could see really was two points of light from their wands moving quickly through each frame.  
  
Finally, she reached the end of the corridor. "Under the rug is a trapdoor Hermione but you need to know the password even to see it," Severus-the- first explained from the final darkened frame. Hermione levitated the moth- eaten rug and rolled it back. "The password is 'Targitaus'," Severus-the- first hissed to her.  
  
"Targitaus," Hermione said. A metal trapdoor quickly took shape in the wooden floorboards.  
  
"Now, take that small frame off the wall once we've gone into it. There are paintings where we are going but it would not be either safe or pleasant for us to enter them," Severus-the-first instructed. Hermione waited until they had gone into the frame preceded by their small wand lights, then took it off the wall and held onto it while she used another levitating spell to open the heavy metal trap door.  
  
Carefully, Hermione made her way down the steep, narrow stairs. They were stone fortunately as wooden stairs may well have rotted and been dangerous. After doing down to what Hermione guessed was ground level, she found another trap door in the stone floor. "Same password, my dear," Hermatica said from the small frame in Hermione's hand.  
  
"Targitaus," Hermione said clearly and levitated the heavy metal door back once again.  
  
"Be warned, Hermione. You will encounter many charms put there to discourage anyone who may have stumbled across these secret passages. All of them are illusions," Severus-the-first said authoritatively.  
  
Carefully she descended more stone steps until she noticed a huge chasm in the staircase where stone had fallen away. "It's an illusion, Hermione. Close your eyes and keep going," came Severus-the-first's voice. She nodded and did as she was bid with a pounding heart. Soon, the chasm was behind her and she was fine. The stairs seemed to go down forever and Hermione's legs were getting sore. There was a faint breeze along the stairs which meant fresh air was getting in somewhere. It was just as well otherwise she would have passed out from stale air long ago.  
  
Finally she hit level stone but a long tunnel stretched out in front of her filled with an unnatural sickly yellow light. The tunnel was low and unalleviated by any features. It was smooth stone and had no bends or openings. It was like an endless tomb and oppressed Hermione's spirit almost unbearably. "It does end fairly soon, it's just an illusion that it goes on forever Hermione," came Hermatica's voice reassuringly.  
  
She nodded, took a deep breath and continued. Sure enough within 5 minutes Hermione came to the end which was just more smooth stone. "Use the password again," Severus-the-first commanded.  
  
"Targitaus," she said clearly and the stone melted away to reveal the snarling fangs of a huge, black hound whose head was the same size as Hermione's entire body and whose red eyes were fixed right on her.  
  
She was frozen, almost unable to believe her eyes. "It's not real Hermione," came Severus-the-first's clear voice. "Take one step forward and it will disappear."  
  
It was the hardest step Hermione had ever had to take. She closed her eyes, held her breath and ignoring the deafening snarls of the dog and its hot breath on her body she took one small, shaking step forward. The snarling stopped abruptly.  
  
She finally opened her eyes and found herself looking into a huge underground room with a high, cave-like ceiling. She stepped inside over where the hound had been and looked around. It seemed to be a combination of laboratory, library and. dungeon of some kind, Hermione thought. It was a very unpleasant place; cramped, dark, cluttered, dank, and full of nasty smells and heavy silence.  
  
Slowly she walked around starting from one side and working her way around the room. On one side was a laboratory with potion making equipment still set up. It looked as though there may have been some experiments in progress Hermione assessed professionally. And not particularly pleasant ones either judging from the ingredients, she thought.  
  
She looked at the library selection with interest that quickly turned to repugnance. She had no doubt that if Dumbledore had assessed this library for its suitability, not many volumes would have survived. One book however caught her attention. It was called simply, Darke Creatures. Her own animagus was a dark creature and there was a very small section on the Black Unicorn which surprised her as it was very hard to find any written material about the creatures. Apart from out-lining what Hermione already knew about the black unicorn, the book offered one more bit of useful information.  
  
"The blacke unicorne's haire, if used in a wande of ebonie will create a powerfulle magikal instrument beyonde the powere of wands mayde with whyte unicorne haire, phoenix tail feather or dragone's heartstring. The properties of these art unknowne as there art no record of such a wande ever mayde."  
  
She slipped the small book into one of the capacious pockets in her robe.  
  
She moved over finally to the dungeon section but found she could not make her legs take too many steps into that area. They simply felt too weak. There were instruments of torture there, amazingly crude ones considering that the wizarding community had fairly sophisticated spells and charms and potions to torture each other with if anyone cared to learn them, and there had been plenty who had especially at the height of the Death Eaters reign of terror.  
  
Her eyes wondered but did not linger over the iron rings set high into the stone walls, the sharp iron rods, a dunking stool, a rack, an iron maiden, branding irons, garrotes, piles of rusting chains, man sized metal cages and other disturbing items that she was unable to identify.  
  
Taking a deep breath, she walked up to one of the walls near the iron rings and pointing her wand at the wall said, "cruor aetas". It was a simple spell for checking the age of blood stains. It was a useful magical forensic test that she had used often in her field research when developing tools for Aurors. The reading from the spell was thirty years. Hermione gasped. Thirty years ago Severus would have been 15 years old. Her parents were almost certainly responsible for this set of bloodstains. This dungeon most likely had been fully operational during his parent's life. Of course, until further forensic tests were done it wasn't confirmed but it looked pretty damning.  
  
Hermione felt very, very sick suddenly and rushed back to the laboratory section of the room to sit down. She put her head between her knees and took deep breaths, putting the picture frame of Hermatica and Severus-the- first onto the bench first.  
  
"What is it dear?" Hermatica said kindly. "What did your spell tell you?"  
  
"That Severus' parents were probably murderers," Hermione choked, sitting up again.  
  
"Not probably - most definitely. I saw many wizards and witches disappear down that trapdoor never to be seen again. On one occasion I did follow the portraits down here while they were torturing some poor bastard. He died. I never went back again, I just couldn't bear it. That and the inhabitants of the portraits that you see around you are quite dangerous characters. I barely made it back out the first and only time I came," Severus-the-first explained.  
  
Hermione looked around the hard, cruel faces in the portraits on the walls; all watching her rather contemptuously. She shuddered, they certainly did look dangerous. "Don't worry, they can't hurt you where they are," he added when he saw her look at the portraits with horror.  
  
Hermione swallowed. "You must never, never tell Severus about this place. Not ever!" she said, her tone unyielding. "He would never get over the shock and I don't want him torturing himself over something his parents did and he knew nothing about."  
  
"Most definitely not!" Severus-the-first agreed emphatically. "Why do you think I never have before now?"  
  
"He was always a sensitive boy. I know as an adult he protected himself with sarcasm, moodiness and harshness but it was only because he'd been hurt so much as a child and young man," Hermatica said empathetically.  
  
"I know," Hermione said in a small voice, her face distressed. "Let's go. I've had enough for one day." Tiredly she made her way back the way she'd come, her feet dragging. "We'll have to destroy a lot of that stuff," she commented quietly as she trudged up the stone stairs. "And it won't be easy. I'll need to get help from experts at destroying Dark Arts materials like Padma."  
  
"You can organize that for when Severus is teaching," Severus-the-first stated.  
  
"Yes," she agreed, gratefully coming back out of the final trapdoor. She covered it up again and put the small picture back up on the wall so Hermatica and Severus-the-first could escape it back to their own frames.  
  
The pair watched the small figure of the woman walk tiredly back out of the West Wing. "Do you think it was too much for her?" Hermatica asked Severus- the-first putting one arm around him.  
  
"Once the shock has worn off, Hermione will get that hell hole cleaned out and the evil garbage in there destroyed in the best possible way. I trust her common sense and strength of character as much as I trust yours," he replied, moving closer to her.  
  
Hermatica put both her arms around him and kissed him. 


	7. Chapter Six, To Him I Shall Belong

Chapter Six  
  
"Marriage is honourable in all" Hebrews 13:4  
  
That weekend, Hermione was heading past the main sitting room to get to the library when she heard someone say her name in her own voice. It always gave her the creeps when she heard Hermatica speak because it was like listening to herself. And what is she talking about me for? Hermione wondered with a touch of annoyance. She crept closer to the doorway. After all, if she had no compunction reading Severus' mail when it was coming from Voldemort all those years ago, she certainly was going to eavesdrop on a conversation that involved herself.  
  
"You should talk to Hermione about it, Severus," the girl in the portrait was saying to someone, either Severus-the-first or her own Severus.  
  
"I don't want to put any pressure on her to do something she may have a strong objection to. I don't want to make her feel guilty for saying 'no' if she's really against the idea," she heard Severus reply, sounding tired and subdued. Of course, Hermione could never tell the difference between her Severus' voice and Severus-the-first's voice either.  
  
"You don't even know if she has a strong objection to it because you've never really spoken to her seriously about it, have you?" Hermatica said gently.  
  
"No, not really," one of the Severus' admitted. "But if I do broach it seriously and tell her how I feel, and she does strongly object - it may eventually drive her away from me. I don't want it that badly. I'd rather have Hermione."  
  
From this last speech, Hermione could tell it was her own Severus replying to Hermatica. She was beginning to feel guilty about eavesdropping but reasoned that if Severus was afraid to talk to her about something, this may be the only way she'd find out his real feelings. With a troubled expression, she kept listening.  
  
"You couldn't drive Hermione away from you with a herd of wild horses," Severus' voice said dryly, obviously Severus-the-first.  
  
"She's still so young," Severus replied to him in his deep voice with a tone of worry that Hermione heard very rarely. "She has plenty of time to change her mind."  
  
"She loves you. She's not going anywhere," Hermatica said flatly.  
  
"Something like this may change her mind," Severus reasoned doubtfully.  
  
"It's not about her mind, it's about her heart. That won't change," Hermatica said softly.  
  
"Yes but. children. It's a big issue. It's a life-changing issue. Even if Hermione hands any children we had over to the care of nannies for most of the time, she still would have to be involved in their lives at some level. It would change her life and she may not want it changed," Severus said in a pained voice.  
  
"I think she doesn't even know that it's a significant issue for you. If she did, I'm sure she would take your wishes into account," Severus, the first said.  
  
"Of course I would," Hermione whispered to herself. Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and went into the room. "Sorry to eavesdrop but I overheard what you all were talking about," she said. Her Severus looked around sharply, an unusual expression of apprehension in his deep-set, black eyes that was quickly gone to be replaced with guardedness.  
  
"Hermione!" he exclaimed.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me how you felt?" she asked him gently, her gaze caressing his face.  
  
Severus visibly relaxed, and Hermatica and the other Severus looked at each other significantly with triumph written clearly on their faces. Hermione glanced at the portrait and saw their smug expressions and smiled to herself.  
  
"Don't you think you two have interfered enough for one day?" Hermione said pointedly but with affection.  
  
"Fine, we can take a hint. We'll remove ourselves to another part of the Manor," Hermatica said with mock indignation and with a wink at Hermione, took her Severus off to another landscape picture somewhere else in the Manor.  
  
"Good, now we can talk," Hermione said to her Severus and folded herself into a comfortable armchair next to him. "I repeat, why didn't you tell me how you felt?" she said to Severus.  
  
"You must have overheard why. It is important to me but not important enough that I want to lose you over it," Severus admitted, looking down at his own hands.  
  
"How long have you felt this way?" she asked gently.  
  
Severus frowned. It was a difficult question to answer accurately. He had never thought about an heir as his life had taken the wrong direction into the Death Eaters at a very young age. By the time his life was on the right track and he felt he owned it again, he was already into his late 20s. He had felt exhausted and jaded and hated himself so much by that stage that he felt unworthy of the attention of any woman he may have been attracted to. He had frankly never thought he would have the opportunity to provide the Snape line with an heir.  
  
Then Hermione came into his life and turned it on its head. At the beginning, he had been so stunned that a young and beautiful woman like Hermione was genuinely attracted to him that it took him quite some time to get over that. Then it took another period to really fully absorb the fact that she truly loved him and didn't really want to be with anyone else. In that time, he'd sensed her ambivalence about marriage and children, and when he finally did bring the subject up, she was dismissive and said she was happy the way things were.  
  
In a sense, so was he but over the past few years he'd found himself wanting more than what they had. He had begun to have some sense of hope for the future after experiencing a run of truly good, happy, peaceful years with Hermione - an occurrence that had never happened before in his life. If things had been so good, maybe they could be even better? Maybe he could plan for a future for the Snape lineage after all? Maybe it didn't have to die out with him? Maybe he had finally seen a kind of life that was worth living and felt that bringing a child into the world wasn't an automatic sentence of misery? There were any number of reasons why there had been a growing longing within him to marry Hermione and have children with her.  
  
All these thoughts and feelings ran through Severus' brain in a flash but he was still unsure how to answer. "I guess I've been aware of it since the early stages but it's only recently become a strong desire - in the last few years," he finally replied, still looking frowningly at his hands.  
  
Hermione glanced at his hands too. They were probably the most physically attractive thing about him; strong, slender, long-fingered and pale. They still fascinated her and drew her gaze. Hermione sighed. "I wish you'd told me," she said quietly.  
  
Severus' frown grew deeper. "How do you feel about it?" he asked, his deep voice low almost as though he didn't really want the answer.  
  
"I want you to be happy. If you want an heir, we can have some children. Wizard medicine would make it very easy and painless for me, and if we used nannies I wouldn't have to take too much time away from work," she said reasonably. "I didn't know you felt this strongly about it, otherwise we could have had them sooner."  
  
Severus' face went very pale and then his cheekbones stained red. Hermione knew from long experience that he was in the grip of some strong emotion. He rarely showed it in any other way but his translucent skin always gave him away to her. His hands were also clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed white.  
  
"I don't want my children to be illegitimate, Hermione," he said quietly, suddenly looking away out of the nearby window.  
  
"If that's your idea of a marriage proposal, then it really sucks," Hermione joked.  
  
"You never seemed to be interested when I mentioned it before and I never wanted to put any pressure on you," Severus explained, his face tense and still not looking at her.  
  
"I didn't know it was important to you. I was happy so why change anything? It has been very good, Severus," she said soothingly.  
  
"Yes," he agreed, his voice rasping slightly. "But I think it could be even better."  
  
Hermione swallowed nervously and took a deep breath. Severus glanced at her quickly, a dark frown still etched on his face. She took the garnet ring he had given her on her 18th birthday off the third finger of her right hand and still holding her breath, put it on the third finger of her left hand. "There," she said. "Now we're engaged." Then she let out her breath, feeling a bit shell shocked. It felt like she had just stepped over the edge of a cliff. She felt terrified and light headed with it but she's defeated fear with regard to her relationship with Severus before and she'd do it again. A memory of the shudder of fear that had torn through her frame on the moors that morning after Voldemort's defeat as Severus held her came back to her clearly.  
  
Severus stared at her, his frown disappearing. "It doesn't feel any different," she said with a smile, relaxing slightly. She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers at him. "There, all official." Colour flooded Severus' sharp cheekbones. He took the hand that was being wiggled at him and placed a kiss in its palm. Hermione's fingers caressed his face, so beloved to her. He lifted his lips from her palm and kissed her on the mouth.  
  
"Mrs Hermione Snape," Hermione muttered when he lifted his mouth from hers. "That doesn't sound right. Mrs Hermione Granger-Snape? Mrs Hermione Snape-Granger? Argh! How about I just keep my own name for professional purposes?" she suggested.  
  
Severus didn't appear to care one way or the other, as he simply proceeded to kiss her again. 


	8. Chapter Seven, I'm Tired of Feeling This...

Chapter Seven  
  
"For your hands are defiled" Isaiah 59:3  
  
The next night was a Sunday, and Severus and Hermione were discussing wedding plans in the main sitting room. The first Severus-the-first and Hermatica had come back to their portraits in the room and were very smugly helping them plan.  
  
"I think I want it to be very simple. Just a small ceremony in the Manor chapel, and a reception with cake and champagne then everyone can piss off home," she said grumpily.  
  
"That sounds reasonable," he agreed gravely.  
  
"And no ostentatious theatrical effects either. Flowers from the gardens, and your family's linen and silver," she added.  
  
"I quite agree," he said. "And it's our linen and silver, especially now," he added pointedly.  
  
"And no horrible baroque organ music," she added meditatively.  
  
"Definitely not," he said, sounding appalled.  
  
Hermione's mind was really elsewhere however. "I need to show you something," she said after a pause and then fished the small Darke Creatures book from her pocket. She opened it up to the passage about the black unicorns and gave it to him to read.  
  
She saw his slender body tense and a deep frown appear on his face. "Where did you find this?" he rasped.  
  
"In one of the rooms here," Hermione said truthfully but deliberately vague.  
  
Severus was too distracted by what he was reading to have noticed the fact that she was prevaricating. "Imagine what this wand could do," he said, lowering the small volume and staring unseeingly into the fire his dark eyes glowing intently. "It would incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands," he added. "Maybe too dangerous to be worth making."  
  
"Do you think it would be strong enough to destroy Voldemort?" Hermione asked.  
  
He glanced at her sharply but wasn't really seeing her, absorbed in his own thoughts. "Possibly. My own wand weakened him for a decade, image what this wand could do." Severus was sunk deep into thought for the rest of the evening.  
  
* * *  
  
Only a few days later, Hermione could feel a quickening in her blood late in the afternoon. Her visit to the underground room had upset her considerably and the urge to run was growing rapidly. She had not promised anyone not to transform as she never made promises unless she knew for sure that she could keep them but she felt she owed it to at least Severus to try not to.  
  
By twilight, she was clutching her own arms compulsively and pacing by the library window, her gaze returning again and again to the deep green of the Dark Forest on the horizon. Severus was in his potions laboratory near his study and had no idea of the battle Hermione was fighting within herself.  
  
As the night drew closer, tears ran down her face and she shivered. She could not believe how hard it was not to open the window and climb out and apparate to the forest outskirts. She was on the verge of doing so when Severus came into the library for a reference book and stopped dead at the sight of a tearful and shaking Hermione. He had never seen her in that state in his life.  
  
"What the hell.?" he began, striding over to her scowling at her condition. He stopped again when he saw her eyes. The grey was streaked with fine lines of red and gold. His heart nearly stopped, it looked so eerie. It was like something else was looking out of Hermione's eyes.  
  
"I need to go. I have to go." Hermione said almost breathlessly, swallowing hard.  
  
Severus thought hard and did battle with himself for a few seconds but the expression of desperation on her face convinced him. He took her hand and they apparated to the edges of the forest. A second later the black unicorn and a raven were making their way through the night forests, one following the other as though connected by an invisible thread.  
  
The forest was active that night. Fairy rings spotted the forest floor where Bacchus and his wild girls gathered to welcome the faery folk into the forest for a night of carousing. Obviously it was some kind of festival for the magical folk in the Dark Forest. Pixie lights were strung up in the ancient trees, glittering with multi-coloured lights and making the branches glow softly. The tree and river dryads could be seen slipping from their homes to join in the festivities and paths had been lighted along the forest floor for the forest folk to follow to the dancing and feasting grounds. In the distance there was sounds of strange music, crystalline and clear that made the hearer feel both restless and overpowered with its sweetness at one and the same time. The Dark Forest, usually brooding and silent with only odd patches of light or hidden activity, had come to life in the most enchanting way.  
  
For the first time, the black unicorn encountered a family of white unicorns. Severus in his raven form watched the black unicorn's reaction with interest. The unicorn family were in a in a small clearing lit dimly with delicate fairy lights amongst the tree roots. The mother was nudging the foal with her nose. As beautiful as the black unicorn was, the white unicorn was just as glorious. The black unicorn was like dense shadow reflecting the light of the moon off its coat. The white unicorn was its opposite - it glowed with a gentle white light and lit up the night around it with a soft glow. Their horns were silver and their eyes shone the same colour mixed with midnight blue. Seeing a family of them was a potent experience that lodged forever in the spectator's mind and heart like a precious jewel.  
  
Severus expected the black unicorn to go up to the family in the clearing but it did the opposite, it melted into the shadows of a thicket of twisted old oak trees. Severus could see one red and gold eye watching the family with fascination. Suddenly he realized the beast was ashamed to be seen by the family. To his horror, he saw a molten gold tear escape the creature's eye. Where it fell on the ground, it left ash.  
  
The family soon moved on, walking deftly on ivory hooves and throwing out their diffused light. As they moved off, they sang gently. Severus sat in his raven form on a branch, completely transfixed. The only sound the black unicorn made was a cry that tore apart the universe. The white unicorn's song seemed to stitch the universe together with beauty and peace. While Severus could hear it, he could hardly believe that evil could exist - it seemed impossible.  
  
Close to morning, the beast stopped finally and pawed the moist ground, lifting its snout to snort into the night air. It turned its head and spied the raven on a branch above. The raven flew down suddenly onto the unicorn's neck and took a hair from its mane in its beak. Shortly after, dawn broke and Hermione and Severus apparated home feeling tired, dazed and slightly bewitched from the strange atmosphere in the forest that night.  
  
"Did you get it?" Hermione asked tiredly, swaying on her feet in the now cold library.  
  
"Yes," he replied and held out his slender hand. Across the palm lay a strip of dense shadow, thin as a hair. Apart from its dimensions, there was nothing hair-like about it. It looked merely like a hair-shaped piece of space devoid of any light. They both stared at it in fascination, never having seen anything like it.  
  
Severus summoned a small phial from his laboratory and carefully placed the longish hair inside, sealing it carefully. "We need to get changed, Hermione. We need to go to Ollivanders as soon as it opens," Severus said decisively.  
  
Wearily she nodded and they both walked to their separate dressing rooms near their shared bedroom.  
  
* * *  
  
Mr Ollivander looked at the strange hair for a long, long time.  
  
"This is top secret Ministry business, do you understand?" Severus growled, glowering at the slight, white-haired old man with a merry face.  
  
"Yes, I would imagine so," Mr Ollivander said seriously, still looking intently at the mane hair.  
  
"It needs a casing of ebony," Severus explained sharply. "How long will it take to make?"  
  
"Oh, not long. It's not the manufacture of the wands that takes the time and care but rather the gathering of the rare components," Mr Ollivander explained. "Wait here. I imagine you will want to observe the process." Severus nodded, still keeping a tight hold on the precious hair whilst the small, agile shopkeeper went to his supplies of wood and pulled out a long, slender piece of ebony already polished and ready for manufacture. "It's like its been waiting for this hair all along," Mr Ollivander said, lovingly showing them the beautiful shining wood.  
  
Mr Ollivander carefully split the wood into two pieces and hollowed out the middle slightly with a few muttered charms. He indicated to Severus to lay the hair along the hollow in one piece and still muttering charms, he then sealed the two pieces together. As soon as the seal was completed the wand began glowing red and spitting gold sparks. "Interesting," Mr Ollivander said. "Very interesting."  
  
The glow and sparks quickly faded, and Mr Ollivander handed Severus the wand carefully. He immediately hid it in his wand pocket deep in his robes.  
  
"I won't ask where that extraordinary hair came from," Mr Ollivander said, as Severus paid him. "I imagine that is Ministry business but I will say that it looks remarkably like white unicorn hair, only black."  
  
"What makes you say that?" Hermione asked, coming forward curiously.  
  
Mr Ollivander quickly trotted to the back of his shop and came back with a long, thin, solid gold box. He carefully opened it and took a long, hair- thin piece of light out and laid it across Hermione's palm. It was pure white light that glowed gently across her palm with seemingly as little real substance as the black unicorn hair. She stared at it, unable to take her eyes off it.  
  
The unicorn hair suddenly went very bright then went out, almost like a muggle light bulb that had blown. She was left with a bit of translucent hair in her hand. She gasped and Mr Ollivander's twinkling blue eyes suddenly went very wide. "Well, I've never seen that happen before," he remarked.  
  
"I've ruined it!" Hermione said, her eyes filling with unusual tears. "I'm sorry!"  
  
"Never mind, dear. That unicorn will donate plenty more hairs and I've got a boxful here," he said comfortingly, patting her hand.  
  
Severus led the genuinely distressed Hermione out of Ollivanders and they apparated back to the Manor. "Why did it do that?" she asked him, rubbing her forehead.  
  
"Hermione, you are the black unicorn remember?" Severus said. "The black unicorn is simply a white unicorn that was exposed to much evil when young. I imagine the evil that turned you into a dark creature still lives in your skin and would affect white unicorn hair that way," he said, sitting down tiredly. It had been a long, long night.  
  
Hermione held up one hand and looked at it. Tainted, she thought. I'm completely tainted. She left the library and went to her study. She wanted to absorb this new insight and mourn in private.  
  
Severus watched her go with penitent and knowing eyes. 


	9. Chapter Eight, Me and My Shadow Are Wres...

AN: To those reviewers that I am unable to contact direct via email, thank you for taking the time to leave a review. It is always much appreciated and I find the feedback valuable. :)  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Eight  
  
"And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee." Deuteronomy 30:7  
  
NB - The events described in this chapter are based on accounts of medical experiments undertaken by the Nazis during WWII. It was sourced from various web sites and where accounts have been lifted nearly word for word, it has been acknowledged.  
  
Hermione decided to take a week off work to do some private research of her own. Her team was perfectly capable of teaching the new charms to the Aurors and showing them how to use the new potion. There were some gaps in her knowledge of what happened 10 years ago and she had been putting off having them filled for a long time. The mere thought of what she had to do made her feel sick to her stomach but she knew she'd have to face it sooner or later.  
  
In the weeks and months after Voldemort's last defeat, she had been a regular visitor to the wizarding hospital where Voldemort's victims had been recuperating. She had never asked them about their experiences and they had never volunteered to talk about it either.  
  
Hermione did not believe in sweeping tragedy under the rug but rather believed that it could be redeemed via valuable lessons being learned from it. At the time, both she and the victims had been so traumatized that she had left it to the wizard psychologists and counselors to help them cope with the memories and suffering. Now, she needed their help to understand what Voldemort's goals and objectives had been. It may give her some clues about how to approach his current re-emergence and to develop strategies for the Aurors to use in the battle that would surely ensue.  
  
Because she had spent time with the victims all those years ago, most trusted her to agree to see her. Some refused when she explained why she wished to make contact with them again and she understood why. Fortunately, there had not been a great many victims at that stage as Voldemort was still in the early stages of his campaign when he had been crushed by Severus' actions that night on the moors. Around a dozen or so of them agreed to meet with her over the following week.  
  
Hermione prepared some penseives to use to store the memories in. The information they provided would be more accurate than what the victim's conscious mind allowed them to remember. Hermione could bypass their conscious and take memories direct from the subconscious although the interviews themselves would provide the interpretation for what the penseives would show.  
  
She didn't tell Severus what she was doing because she knew it would just upset him again. Any mention of that night on the moors made him look ill and she couldn't bear that look on his face.  
  
Her first interview was harrowing. All the victims were men of Muggle parentage although Hermione had no doubt that once Voldemort had started expanding his operation, anyone with Muggle blood would have been taken including herself. The man was now in his late 40s and was well-educated and articulate.  
  
"It started with twisted ideas of ``racial hygiene'' espoused by Voldemort himself, of course. Those theories gave the Death Eaters scientific justification for eventual forced sterilization and ``euthanasia'' - the killing of the retarded, handicapped and others deemed a burden on the wizarding gene pool. This would happen after Voldemort seized power, of course" the man said in a neutral tone, his eyes empty.  
  
"He was completely open about his intentions?" Hermione asked, surprised.  
  
"Oh yes. He did not consider that he may be defeated a second time nor that we would ever have the opportunity to tell the story," he replied with frightening blankness. "He expected us to be dead in very short order and if you hadn't found us when you did, we would have been."  
  
"When the Death Eaters set up the camp that you found, Voldemort's researchers had plans to receive organs of camp victims used as Muggle wizard guinea pigs. The Death Eaters hoped the research would lead to medical advances that would help them build a master wizarding race," he explained, his eyes lowered.  
  
*"The 'pure' wizarding race was the most important goal of the Death Eaters. It was the largest part of the over all plan. These super wizards were to be the only race. The Muggle born that did not meet the race requirements were to by cleansed from society through genocide - that was the eventual goal. Voldemort and his inner circle made a list of rules for Death Eaters to follow. The new rules required all Death Eaters before marriage must submit to general testing to insure racial purity. The rules for marriage were unbelievably complex. If the laws for marriage were broken it would mean the death penalty," he continued, his voice halting.  
  
"He told you everything, didn't he?" Hermione said broodingly. "I wonder why," she mused aloud.  
  
"I think he enjoyed terrorizing us with visions of a future without us. He hated us - anyone with Muggle blood. I think he was so obsessed with the idea that it was all he thought of and all he spoke of. He felt he had no reason to fear us, so he shared his obsession with us freely and enjoyed the cruelty of it. He enjoyed making us feel helpless and despairing," the man observed without any inflection in his tone to indicate his feelings on the matter.  
  
Hermione nodded and sighed deeply. The man submitted without comment to her trapping his memories in the penseive but refused to look at them. "I don't need reminding," he said grimly - the first emotion he had shown. The second interview that afternoon was worse. This man had only been a teenager at the time he had been abducted and suffered in Voldemort's camp.  
  
"Voldemort was trying to determine if there were any physical differences between Muggle born wizards and those without Muggle genes," the next victim explained, his hands shaking as he lifted a cup of tea to his lips inbetween puffs on a cigarette. "He took a lot of our blood and did some strange experiments on it using various charms and potions. Some of us were close to death from blood loss alone. He made others drink vile potions that made them very sick under the pretext of testing whether our reactions to the substances were any different from those without Muggle genes. Of course, we never saw any of Voldemort's precious 'pure blood' Death Eaters drink the stuff so I have no idea how he could make any comparisons. Some of us vomited so violently after drinking it that we must have torn the lining of our stomachs because we were bringing up blood."  
  
Hermione rubbed her face with one hand. It was worse that she'd anticipated.  
  
"Others were made to drink cultures that contained live bacteria and viruses of both wizarding and Muggle diseases. Apparently they wanted to find out if Muggle borns showed different symptoms to pure bloods when they contracted these diseases," he continued nervously, lighting another cigarette immediately after putting out the last one.  
  
"What was he trying to prove?" Hermione asked in bewilderment, shaking her head.  
  
"That Muggle borns are inherently inferior, of course," the man said with a shrug.  
  
Once again, the younger man refused to look at the memories in the penseive. "They already keep me awake at night," he said dryly. "I don't need to see them in the daytime too."  
  
Hermione went home that night discouraged and not wanting to get up the next day to face the next three interviews.  
  
The first two the next day repeated pretty much what she had heard the previous day but the third interviewee revealed some interesting new information. "They took a lot of measurements," the man in his fifties said pensively, staring out of the window of his one room flat in a dingy inner London suburb.  
  
"Measurements?" Hermione said with a frown.  
  
"Yes. They measured every part of our body and wrote it all down. Then they compared it to other charts," he explained.  
  
"Charts?" Hermione probed.  
  
"Charts of the Death Eaters' measurements. I think they were trying to find consistent physical differences between us and those who weren't Muggle born," he said, grimacing.  
  
"Yes, I think that was their aim," Hermione said quietly.  
  
The rest of the week provided further atrocious revelations. Some of the victims described having burning hot or icy cold fluid pumps into their bodies via various orifices. Others were suspended in freezing cold or nearly boiling hot water for days. Hermione learned that Voldemort was testing their endurance, probably hoping to discover some physical weakness amongst Muggle borns that he could use in developing a weapon to target Muggle borns into the future. They were burnt, cut, frozen, boiled, made to run until they collapsed on treadmills, made to breathe in various harmful gases, had things poked into their bodies - by the end of the week, Hermione felt emotionally battered.  
  
* * *  
  
When Hermione went to see Dumbledore about what she had learned, she took Severus with her and finally came clean about what she had really been doing all week when he had thought she was at work. As she had anticipated, the mere mention of that week in their lives made Severus look nauseous.  
  
She took out the penseives that she had examined over the weekend in her study and gave them to Dumbledore for safe keeping. "I believe Voldemort had two aims," Hermione began, summarizing like the scholar that she was. "Firstly, he intended to find out if there were any physical differences between Muggle borns and pure-blood wizards. If there were, he would use this to spread propoganda about the Muggle borns' inferiority to the pure- bloods to engender support in the wizarding community for his own end objective of wiping out Muggle born wizards and witches. He would also use the information he gained to develop weapons against Muggle borns based on any deficiency or difference that he may have found."  
  
Dumbledore nodded slowly while Severus still sat in shock at what Hermione had done without his knowledge. "I am sure you are right, Hermione and the information you have gathered is and will continue to be useful in our battle against Voldemort this time," Dumbledore said gravely.  
  
"How will it be useful?" Severus challenged, getting up to pace with a flourish of his robes. "This is what Voldemort did in the past, it's of no help to us in finding out what he is up to now. You shouldn't have put yourself through that Hermione. Why dig all that up now when it's so far in the past?" he demanded harshly.  
  
"We don't know whether it's going to be useful information to us in our present fight against Voldemort or not yet. It's too early to tell. However, it doesn't hurt to know all we can in case we are able to use it," Hermione said tightly.  
  
"I think it just caused unnecessary anguish to the victims as well as yourself!" Severus argued, his black eyes glittering in the firelight.  
  
"You're not a Muggle born, Mr pure-blood-I-can-trace-my-magical-roots-back- to-the-Moors-and-the-Scythians! You don't have quite the personal investment in these matters that I do!" she said, her voice so frigid and hard that even Dumbledore winced. "I very much doubt that his personal prejudices would have changed in these past 10 years, do you? If he does gain back any significant amount of his power - and it looks like he's well on his way to doing so - I don't want him attacking the Muggle born community again. Maybe by understanding how he went about it last time, we can find clues as to how to prevent him this time." She refused to look at him.  
  
"And my point was that understanding what he did last time isn't going to necessarily be any predictor of how he will work this time. I don't want him attacking the Muggle borns either and I do happen to have a personal investment in that wish - seeing as my wife-to-be is one!" he said starkly, the lines on his face cut deeper than usual with tension. He looked very tired suddenly.  
  
"I happen to think you're both right," Dumbledore said peacefully, wondering why they always chose his office to argue in. "Severus, I think your own fears for Hermione and the bad memories she has brought up for you have distorted your opinion on the value of the work she has done in the past week. Hermione, I think Severus is also right in that we can't make too many assumptions based on Voldemort's modus operandi last time either. We need to keep on our toes and keep an open mind. It's helpful to know how he was thinking before but he may have new aims that take precedence this time - like revenge, for example," he added pointedly.  
  
Severus eyed the penseives on Dumbledore's desk with disfavour. He had seen enough when they had liberated the camp, he did not want to see anymore. He shuddered to think what Hermione had heard in the past week and what affect it must have had on her.  
  
"Let's go home, Hermione," he said, in a gentler tone of voice.  
  
She got up and stepped into the fire without a word.  
  
* Sourced from www.remember.org/educate/medexp.html 


	10. Chapter Nine, I've Heard Your Hearts Cry...

Chapter Nine  
  
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." Jeremiah 1:5  
  
Severus looked like he had aged five years in the past few weeks. At 45, he still had yet to show any silver in his raven black hair. He was still reed thin regardless of Hermione's attempts to keep him well fed. All in all, the past 10 years had been kind to him in more ways than just having Hermione in his life. He had not changed physically a great deal over that period but now, he looked white-faced and worried.  
  
It didn't help that he and Hermione had been fighting about her role in the up-coming battle against Voldemort. They had not really had a serious argument in the 10 years they had been together. They had always fought of course, they were both too opinionated not to but there had not been serious disagreements. Hermione's silence and her withdrawal from him was painful to say the least. He simply didn't understand why she avoided him when she was angry.  
  
As for Hermione, she did not remember ever being so angry with Severus and it hurt her even while she couldn't let go of it. She stayed away from him some days so she didn't say things that she'd later regret. It wasn't the type of anger than could be released by pegging a few heavy books in his general direction either. She knew she was sulking and she hated herself for doing it but she was so furious with him that she could barely look at him without resentment burning in her eyes some days. At the same time she was avoiding him, she missed him desperately; she missed his scent, the feel of his lean frame, his deep voice right next to her ear, the silky fall of his hair against her cheek.  
  
One Saturday when Severus, Ron and Harry were out together on Ministry business, Ginny and Padma asked her to baby-sit their children so they could go into London to do some shopping. Hermione didn't mind baby- sitting once in a while and Luna had volunteered to come over and give her a hand as well as keep her company.  
  
Little Lily was in a new set of bright orange Chudley Canon overalls. Hermione looked at this with amusement. "I know," Ginny sighed. "But whenever we go clothes shopping, she has a tantrum unless I buy her a new set." Luna giggled at this piece of information.  
  
Molly was in a cute denim pinafore and her dark curls, so like her mother's, were tied in two fetching pigtails. "So cute!" Hermione murmured affectionately at her. Molly grinned. She liked her Aunty Hermione.  
  
The twin boys, Albert and Eddie, were in jeans with a sweater Granny Molly had insisted on knitting for them. "I hate purple," Eddie said mournfully to his Aunty Luna.  
  
"I hate purple too," she replied reassuringly.  
  
"We'll be back by 4pm," Padma said.  
  
"Thanks for taking them off our hands today," Ginny added gratefully.  
  
"They're no trouble at all," Hermione said, looking dubiously at Lily who was already speeding up and down the hallway on her baby broom.  
  
"Do you need anything from London?" Padma asked, as they were leaving.  
  
"Nah. Do you Luna?" Hermione replied.  
  
"Nah. Pandora and I are going in next weekend anyway," Luna said cheerfully.  
  
Albert and Eddie disappeared into the library almost immediately. "Well, that's them taken care of for the day," Hermione remarked, looking after them. "We just need to remember to feed them."  
  
"I hope they don't get into any of Severus' really valuable books," Luna said anxiously.  
  
"The really valuable ones are kept locked up," Hermione replied matter-of- factly, still eyeing Lily on her broom whizzing up and down, dodging furniture. She frowned suddenly. "Luna, does it seem odd to you that Lily is already so well co-ordinated for a 2 year old?" she asked.  
  
"It is amazing how she handles that broom but don't forget, her father is a national Quidditch star and is now coaching the national Quidditch team. She must have got that ability from him," Luna mused.  
  
"Yes but. at just 2; to have that kind of speed and agility? She's better on that thing than some of the 7th years at Hogwarts were in our year," Hermione said, frowning.  
  
"Well, my guess is that she's going to follow her father's footsteps as a Seeker on the national Quidditch team," Luna observed lightly.  
  
Hermione grinned. "She'd love that and so would he!"  
  
"Ginny wouldn't!" Luna said, then laughed out loud. Hermione joined in.  
  
Mid-morning saw them drinking a cup of Orange Pekoe tea in the main sitting room where Molly was watching the antics of her friend Lily and Lily was playing with her toy wand that could perform up to fifty harmless spells. Luna suddenly put down her teacup and looked seriously at Hermione.  
  
"Hermione, can I tell you something in confidence and ask your opinion?" she said quietly.  
  
Hermione frowned at Luna's grave tone. "Of course," she replied, concerned.  
  
"This is going to sound stupid but," she paused and lowered her dark green eyes for a second. "I keep having these dreams. Growing up, I had lots of dreams that came true. Not just ordinary day to day stuff but major events in the wizarding world," she glanced at Hermione who was listening earnestly. "They stopped for a long time but just recently I've been dreaming a lot. I don't know if the content of my dreams are true or whether it's just my subconscious making up nightmarish rubbish. I know that you had a lot to do with Voldemort's downfall 10 years ago so you might have a better insight into what these dreams mean, if they mean anything at all," she concluded.  
  
Hermione nodded solemnly and said, "why don't you tell me about them?" So Luna did. Hermione's face went white and she put her teacup down before she dropped it.  
  
"Do you understand any of this?" Luna asked the unnaturally pale-faced Hermione.  
  
"Luna, you've just described the memories of the people who were captured by Voldemort. Just in the past week or so, I've been speaking to them about their experiences in the camp and what Voldemort did to them and why. You could have been describing any of the contents of the pensieves I filled with their memories," Hermione said shakily. Somehow, Luna's descriptions of her dreams had brought the memories the victims had shared with Hermione to searing life.  
  
"So, it is true?" Luna said, hardly believing it herself.  
  
"Oh yes," Hermione breathed.  
  
Hot, silent tears ran down Luna's cheeks. "I so hoped you were going to tell me I was just crazy," she said honestly. "I didn't want it to be true." Her small, slender hands were shaking and she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. "Draco will be horrified," she murmured.  
  
"You've told him?" Hermione asked gently.  
  
Luna nodded. "I've told him every time I've had one of these dreams. Each time, he's seen it happen in the newspapers months or years down the track."  
  
"But this dream is of the past," Hermione said questioningly.  
  
"I've had dreams about past tragedies too and some have been able to be confirmed via historical record but not all," Luna replied tiredly, mopping her cheeks with a tissue.  
  
"What does Draco make of it?" Hermione asked. She knew Draco was bright and she tended to trust his opinions.  
  
"He doesn't know what to make of it. It's hardly something that fits into an empirical, scientific mold," Luna replied wryly.  
  
"Precognition is a well known magical ability Luna," Hermione said comfortingly.  
  
"But it's not a well-respected one. It's too inconsistent," Luna muttered, shredding her damp tissue.  
  
"It's not just precognition though. You must be tapping into people's memories of great historical tragedy too - memories of those both alive and dead," Hermione postulated, interested in how it all would work.  
  
"Maybe," Luna said. "I read that the electro-magnetic fields all over the earth trap the emotions and thoughts of those who suffer enormously and sometimes it's possible to tap into them," she explained in a subdued voice.  
  
"If you have a gift for it," Hermione added meaningfully. "Not just anyone could."  
  
"I wonder if you could develop a charm or something that could tap into those trapped emotions and thoughts in those electro-magnetic fields," Luna wondered aloud.  
  
"It might be worth getting a research and development team together to try and experiment," Hermione said, her dark eyes suddenly gleaming as her brain ran through the possibilities. "In any case, you're coming with me to see Dumbledore once Ginny and Padma get back from London. I think he will want to hear these dreams too."  
  
Just then, there was an explosion to one side of them. They both started and looked at Lily sitting covered in soot in the middle of the sitting room floor. At the end of her toy wand, her rubber baby dragon was scraping the carpet with its claws and breathing smoke down its snout. "She's animated that toy," Hermione said incredulously.  
  
"Yes, she has," Luna said, wide-eyed.  
  
"How the hell did she know how to do that? That's advanced magic! We didn't cover that until our N.E.W.T.s year," Hermione said under her breath.  
  
"I know," Luna replied in disbelief.  
  
Lily crowed in delight. "Isn't he cute?" she said in her high-pitched, baby girl voice.  
  
"And she's talking in complete sentences," Luna added. "I don't remember her ever using baby talk," she pondered.  
  
"This kid is weird," Hermione said flatly.  
  
"Not weird! Clever," Lily said firmly, waving her wand at the dragon again. The dragon immobilized into rubber once more.  
  
Hermione and Luna's eyes widened. "This is creeping me out," Luna muttered.  
  
* * *  
  
At 4pm on the dot, Ginny and Padma arrived back to pick up their children.  
  
"Do you know that your child can speak in complete sentences?" Hermione asked Ginny.  
  
Ginny frowned. "No. She has never spoken except to crow when she's pleased. Harry was getting worried about it," she said.  
  
"No need to panic there," Luna said significantly. "That child is talking like a ten year old." Ginny looked shocked.  
  
"Did you know that your child also has bizarrely advanced co-ordination?" Hermione questioned.  
  
"Oh yes. The doctors say it is unusual but nothing to panic about," Ginny said, looking at her young daughter doubtfully.  
  
"Hmmm. What about the fact that she can do advanced magic? Like animating toys into fire-breathing dragons?" Luna said pointedly.  
  
Ginny's mouth dropped open and she stared at them both with wide brown eyes. "I've never seen her do that," she whispered.  
  
"Yeah? Well, she can," Hermione said flatly.  
  
Ginny stared at her child and Padma looked at her thoughtfully too. "There must be a reason for it," Padma said finally.  
  
"Of course but what is it?" Luna asked with raised eyebrows.  
  
The three adults stood there and stared at Lily. Molly was clinging to her mother's leg. The two boys came out of the library clutching a book. "May we borrow this?" Albert asked politely, holding out a magnificent tome of unusual magical animals.  
  
"Of course, honey. I know you'll take good care of it," Hermione said with a smile at the boy so reminiscent of their uncles Fred and George.  
  
"We'd better be off. I need to speak to Harry tonight. Is it okay if we drop round sometime if Harry wants to ask you some more questions?" Ginny asked quietly.  
  
"Of course," Hermione said. "Would you like a cup of tea before you go?" she offered.  
  
"No, we'd better get home. Harry will be home from coaching his under 10s team soon," Ginny replied softly and picked Lily up who proceeded to poke her mother in the eye. Harry did volunteer coaching on a Saturday afternoon with the local under 10s team.  
  
Padma ushered her boys out of the door and picked up the placid, smiling Molly. With a smile of gratitude to Hermione and Luna, Padma followed Ginny out. 


	11. Chapter Ten, Let's Make No Impartial Vow

Chapter Ten  
  
"Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay." Ecclesiastes 5:5  
  
Hermione and Luna went straight to Dumbledore and told him what they had discussed earlier. He listened with interest as Luna described her dreams to him. "Well, my dear. You have a gift and a profound one," Dumbledore said keenly to the young woman he had only gotten to know through her friendship with Hermione and Draco.  
  
"It feels more like a curse," Luna replied honestly, unimpressed.  
  
"I'm sure it does," Dumbledore said sympathetically. "Have you had any other vivid dreams? Ones that may appear disjointed and that may make no sense but were very vivid nonetheless?" he probed gently.  
  
Luna nodded. "I keep dreaming of a dark land. A land where there is never any sun. I see tunnels of ice in wonderful shades of aquamarine and pale green. I sense of crowd of people that I can't see but who feel very familiar to me - not like they're related to me but somehow. associated with me," she described haltingly.  
  
Dumbledore and Hermione looked at each other sharply. Luna could have been describing the deep North from a picture. "Anything else, my dear?" Dumbledore asked kindly.  
  
"A black. horse? But not a horse; like a magical creature of some sort similar to a horse. A baby's voice and flames - bright red flames. That's all," Luna said apologetically.  
  
"It's very interesting, my dear. Very interesting indeed," Dumbledore said gravely. "Will you tell me any more dreams you have when they come?"  
  
"Of course, if it helps at all," Luna shrugged.  
  
"I believe they will help very much," the white-haired professor said truthfully.  
  
"I've heard of a theory regarding electro-magnetic fields," Luna said hesitantly, glancing at Hermione. Hermione nodded and filled Dumbledore in on what they had discussed earlier.  
  
"Very interesting," Dumbledore repeated, sitting back in his seat contemplatively. "I vaguely remember hearing about it a long time ago but it was never investigated fully. I'm not sure how it could really help in the war against Voldemort unless we can tap into the memories from future events," Dumbledore mused.  
  
"Well, if that is in fact what I'm tapping into when I dream then it's entirely possible," Luna said.  
  
"As opposed to traditional theories on precognition?" Dumbledore said with interest.  
  
"Does anyone know what precognition really is?" Luna countered.  
  
"No - quite right. It could merely be tapping into the memories of those who will suffer in the future. Time is only a dimension our physical selves exist in, after all," he said, nodding slowly.  
  
"Exactly," Hermione said firmly. "So I think it's worth investigating."  
  
Dumbledore nodded. "Have you finished your current work on the tools for the Aurors, Hermione?" he asked.  
  
"Yes Professor," she answered.  
  
"Well, how about we put you to work on investigating this matter further and running some experiments with young Luna here?" he suggested mildly. "I can arrange it with the Minister for it to be a special assignment for your department."  
  
"Luna, what do you think?" Hermione asked her.  
  
"I'm in," the dark haired young woman said seriously.  
  
"Let's do it," Hermione nodded decisively.  
  
They went on to chat for a while about various things including Lily's strange advanced skills. "It could be very intermittent which is why her mother hadn't seen it before," Dumbledore suggested, handing out tea and crumpets.  
  
"I had the idea she knew exactly what was going on," Hermione said with narrowed eyes. "She understood what we were talking about and was able to reply fully. And, not only did she animate that toy, she reversed the charm too," Hermione said keenly.  
  
"Yes, that does suggest something other than impulse and beginner's luck," Dumbledore conceded thoughtfully. "It was quite deliberate, you say? She wasn't emotional or under some kind of threat at the time?"  
  
Luna shook her head. "No way. She was playing on the floor with Molly and we were in the room with her when she did it."  
  
Just then, Harry and Ginny and Lily arrived in Dumbledore's office. He looked very pleased to see them and offered round more tea and crumpets. "Just who we were discussing," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling down at Lily.  
  
"Hi Professor Dumbledore!" Lily said clearly. "I want to be in Gryffindor when I come to Hogwarts," she said with decision.  
  
Ginny gasped and Harry let out a laugh. "You little faker! You could talk all along," he said affectionately. Nothing Lily did ever upset her father. Lily gurgled with laughter and hugged her father's knee.  
  
The five adults went back over the incidents of the afternoon regarding Lily. "Maybe you'll have to come to Hogwarts early, Miss Lily," Dumbledore said affectionately.  
  
"I'm going to be Head Mistress here one day!" Lily announced calmly. "Once my career as Seeker on the national Quidditch team is over," she added.  
  
Dumbledore laughed with delight. "I will be proud to hand the reins over to you then," he said gravely to the bright eyed and bright haired child. She grinned at him, then toddled over to him and put her pudgy baby arms around his thin knee. "Amazing child," Dumbledore murmured. An instant rapport seemed to form between the very old man and the very young witch, as though they recognized something of their own spirit in each other instantly.  
  
Luna and Hermione left Ginny and Harry talking to Dumbledore about Lily's future later that evening. Luna headed back to the Malfoy Manor and Hermione to the Snape Manor.  
  
As she stepped out of the fireplace in the main sitting room, she nearly stepped on Severus who was pacing furiously in front of the fireplace. "Are you wearing out the rugs again?" she teased.  
  
"Where have you been? If you hadn't got back just then, I was about to do a location charm over the Dark Forest," he snapped.  
  
"I was with Dumbledore. Luna, Ginny, Harry and Lily were there too. Lily is a weird kid," Hermione remarked, going to sit down. Not weird, clever; Lily's baby voice echoed in Hermione's mind and she smiled to herself. "Sorry, I should have left you a note but I didn't realize we'd be gone so long," she added, noticing that Severus was in a fine temper.  
  
Severus sat down, flicking his dark robes. "Now is not the time to disappear without letting me know," Severus rasped, resting his thin cheek on one long-fingered hand and rubbing his eyes tiredly.  
  
"You're a worry wort," Hermione said affectionately, sinking gratefully into the armchair.  
  
"What did you discuss with Dumbledore?" Severus asked in a low voice, his voice unusually tense.  
  
"Lily mainly and also some new research for my department involving Luna," Hermione said, relaxing in the fire's warmth.  
  
Severus nodded and was silent for a few moments. "He didn't discuss the mission?" he asked, his voice still muted and his black eyes averted.  
  
"What mission?" Hermione said, suddenly frowning and sitting up to look at him more closely.  
  
"A date has been set for the first Auror mission to the deep North," Severus said expressionlessly. "Dumbledore wants me to help lead it," he announced quietly.  
  
"And I supposed I'm to sit here in England like a useless child," Hermione said finally after a long silence, her voice bitter.  
  
"Dumbledore will not let you go; no," Severus said quietly, looking at his own pale hands clasped across his lap.  
  
"I suppose you agreed to go?" Hermione said angrily.  
  
"Yes, I did," he said, his deep voice sounding gravelly and tension evident on his mask-like face.  
  
"When are you going?" she asked tightly.  
  
"One week after the wedding," he replied impassively, still waiting tensely for the explosion.  
  
"Right. You want me to marry you and then wave you off on a mission where there is every chance you may not come back? You'll be his first target! I'm not allowed to go but you are?! That's crazy! Voldemort wants you dead every bit as much as he wants to destroy the black unicorn. Has everyone forgotten that you're the reason he lost his power and has had to hide for the past 10 years?" Hermione said, her voice escalating.  
  
"I'm an ex-Death Eater Hermione; the only one that Dumbledore currently has access to apart from Draco. He has to send me," Severus said, getting up again to pace over to the window. He stood there with his back to her, his shoulders bowed with tension.  
  
"I don't see what that's got to do with the fact that you'll be a prime target," Hermione said furiously, her dark grey eyes turning the strange shade of silver that they went when she was tired, angry or emotional.  
  
Severus shrugged, still with his back to her. "Sometimes risks have to be taken," he said tiredly.  
  
"So why can't I take that risk?" she spat back.  
  
"Calculated risks, Hermione!" he said, whirling around and pinning her with his black, glittering gaze.  
  
"This is bullshit!" Hermione said flatly, shaking her head and turning away. "And I'm not marrying a man, only to have him disappear into the fucking blue yonder on a fool's errand."  
  
Severus stared at her. "What are you saying?" he rasped.  
  
"I'm saying that if I'm not allowed to go on this mission with you, I'm not marrying you until you come back!" she said unequivocally.  
  
Severus looked at her disbelievingly but he knew that look all too well. Her face was set, and her slim arms and legs were crossed defensively. "Hermione, there's a chance - a small chance, I believe - that I may not come back at all. I want us to at least be married when I go," he said hoarsely.  
  
"Well then, you'll have some real motivation to get back from there alive won't you?" she said, with tears glittering in her eyes suddenly.  
  
"Don't do this, Hermione," he said tensely.  
  
She shook her head and got up hurriedly from the chair she was sitting in, and hastily left before she started crying in earnest. Severus watched her go then walked unsteadily back to his chair and sat down weakly. His stomach was churning. Surely she didn't mean it, he thought? He sat very still for a long time, staring blindly into space.  
  
Hermione meanwhile had retreated to her study which she had done rather a lot in the past few weeks. She sat at her desk and put her head in her hands. She wanted to cry but her eyes were dry and stinging. Her mind kept shying away from the thought that he may never come back from the mission. She simply couldn't bear to think about it. It was a thought that her brain refused to allow her to comprehend.  
  
Instead, a plan began to form in the back of her mind. 


	12. Chapter Eleven, I Won't Be Held Down

Chapter Eleven  
  
"thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land." Deuteronomy 23:7  
  
A month later the Aurors and other members of the mission were due to meet at the Ministry to apparate together in a team to the outlying reaches of the Northern Polar Cap.  
  
Severus had been forced to postpone the wedding until he was due back and the pain of it lodged in his chest like a dull ache. He had hidden it from Hermione as much as possible, not wanting to make her feel guilty nor spoil the time they had together before he left but she was withdrawn and distracted much of the time anyway, seemingly absorbed in some new experiments that her and her team at the Ministry were working on.  
  
She had not come out of her study since before breakfast that morning and he had to leave soon. He stood in front of the fire in the library, restlessly drumming his long fingers on the mantel and watching the clock. Surely she would come out of her study so he could say good-bye? He couldn't bear to leave without holding her one last time. He hadn't been able to share any of the details of the mission with him which meant she had very much been shut out of his life for the past month. It also meant she had no idea of the team's meeting time but she knew it was that day.  
  
With a last glance at the clock, he swore quietly under his breath and quickly strode to the wing of the manor that he'd given her for her own personal use. Softly he tapped on the door of her study. No response. "Hermione," he called in a low voice. He knew she was in there. It was her favorite place if she wanted solitude. They held each other's studies inviolate and so he had never intruded there before and nor had she ever been in his study or even so much as knocked on its door. "Hermione, it's time for me to leave," he added in the same low tone.  
  
Hermione looked at the door from across her desk with sad eyes. One part of her wanted to leap across the room, fling open the door, grab him and hold him so tightly that he couldn't go anywhere without her attached to him. Instead, she propped her sharp chin in one hand and sat very still. She honestly didn't think she could say goodbye without breaking down.  
  
Severus rested his forehead against the door and briefly closed his stinging eyes, one hand clenched in a fist against the solid wood. He wanted to plead with her to open the door but he knew making her angry was more likely to work. "Hermione, you're being childish!" he said with a touch of imperiousness.  
  
Hermione gave the door a filthy look. "I am not!" she muttered.  
  
"Hermione, if you don't open this door I will break it open," he said, his tone cool.  
  
"Oh, you would not!" Hermione replied more loudly, her eyes narrowing.  
  
When nothing happened, Severus closed his eyes again and took a deep breath. "Hermione, please!" he said. There was something in the tone of his voice - a slight catch - that suddenly broke her down and with a quick flick of her wand, she opened the door. It swung silently open, and Hermione got up from her desk and walked over to where he was standing looking at her with hungry eyes.  
  
He held her so tightly, Hermione could feel every familiar muscle, bone and contour of his wiry torso and arms against her. "We won't be any longer than a fortnight," he said in his velvet and granite voice, next to her ear. She nodded but didn't say anything. Sometimes, what she felt for him felt bigger than herself - as though her body simply couldn't contain it and it would break her wide open one day and scatter her into a million pieces.  
  
"Don't transform. Please - not while I'm not here. Just lock yourself in a big room in the manor or go to the Malfoy Manor or Potter or the Weasleys," he rasped in a tone as close to pleading as he ever got. Hermione realized she was shaking or was it Severus? She suddenly realized they both were. She grasped the silky hair at the nape of his neck and caressed it, afraid she might never be able to again. He lowered his dark head and buried his face against the soft, smooth skin of her throat, breathing in her scent. He lifted his head again just long enough to kiss her softly, then said achingly, "I have to go. They're expecting me," and tore himself away from her. A cold wind blew between them and for just a second they stood staring at each other, then Severus wheeled around and walked swiftly away, his black cloak billowing behind him.  
  
Hermione felt odd, watching him go. As though she was looking at him down a tunnel or a telescope round the wrong way. All her consciousness was focused on one point, Severus' retreating back. Severus simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other to prevent himself suddenly whirling around again and heading straight back to her. He thanked the gods that he would soon be forcibly distracted by the mission; it was the only way he'd make it through the separation.  
  
Hermione waited she knew Severus would have apparated off to mission headquarters, then went to her private dressing room and took out the heavy winter robes she had obtained weeks ago. She had spent the last month researching the North Polar regions in order to go on a private mission there. Her friends may think she was better off in England but she was damned if she was going to sit around at home and be useless, especially when Severus was in danger. She knew arguing with them all was futile, so she had calmly gone about making her own plans.  
  
She had bought herself an invisibility cloak and would simply follow the mission from a distance, keeping tabs on their activities. If they ran into trouble that only she could help them with, they were hardly likely to send her home if she revealed herself at that point. All in all, she doubted anyone would ever realize she had been gone. She had been working at home with Luna running the experiments on the electro-magnetic fields so she would not be missed at the Ministry, and Harry and Ron had both been recruited for the mission itself.  
  
She knew she had to apparate straight out over the Norwegian Sea from England to cross over into the Arctic Circle. She passed between Norway, Iceland and Greenland on the way but would never notice it. She was well prepared with charms to counteract the cold, transform ice and snow into all sorts of useful tools and navigate as well as having small vials of potions should she get sick or injured. She imagined the mission would have made similar preparations.  
  
Feeling quite calm and well-prepared, Hermione fixed the point on the map she wished to go to which was a 100m or so from the North Pole and apparated.  
  
Hermione felt herself falling and falling as the cold struck her like a slap across the face. She should have simply landed on snow and ice almost immediately but there was nothing beneath her feet and it was pitch black; the kind of black that makes you feel blind. Hermione's heart began hammering in her chest. Something was very, very wrong and she had no time to think. Her breath was forced out of her body by the speed of the fall. Suddenly her back hit something solid and she felt herself sliding on a terrifyingly fast surface.  
  
She lost any sense of time as she continued on her headlong slide, seemingly into the center of the earth. Every moment she expected to hit something and be knocked out or killed but it never happened. Gradually she noticed that the darkness was lightening but it was so slowly that it took her a long time to realize that she was seeing dark greys as well as inky, bottomless blacks.  
  
She began to have some hope as the light slowly increased. She still had no idea of time - it could have been ten minutes sliding downwards or ten hours.  
  
Gradually the dark greys gave way to ice blues and greens and pure whites. Hermione finally realized she was sliding down ice tunnels. As the light increased, her eyes widened. Behind the walls of delicately shaded ice she could see moving shadows. They looked like sea creatures but magical ones - sea serpents the size of skyscrapers, horned whales, giant octopi, huge jelly-fish the size of a human house and a race of merpeople the size of giants. Strange lights winked through the ice walls making spectacular shows along the tunnels that Hermione barely got a glimpse off as she whizzed breathlessly by.  
  
Finally, after feeling like she had been sliding along ice tunnels for centuries, Hermione's descent slowed as the tunnels became less steep. She was gently dumped in a pile of snow at the end of the tunnel. Slowly she stood up, her balance unsteady after such a roller coaster ride and dusted the snow off.  
  
Her mouth fell open as she looked around her. She was in an immense ice cave underground. A cave so immense she could not see its top nor the other end. Growing up from the bare ice floor were patches of ice crystals of the same pale blue and green of the tunnels. The walls that she could see were glowing in places from the same eerie lights that showed through in the tunnels as well. The place was silent, a silence so deep that it almost hurt Hermione's ears.  
  
Hermione took a few steps forward and as she did so she suddenly heard the first sound she'd heard since falling. It was a quiet whisper but it sounded loud because everything else was so silent. Hermione's head whipped around as she tried to find its source but it seemed to be coming from all around her.  
  
Then suddenly, she was surrounded.  
  
Hermione's lips parted in astonishment for several reasons. Firstly, because the creatures that surrounded her looked so familiar. Secondly, because it was obvious they were magical and could apparate as she herself could; lastly, because they were so beautiful.  
  
The men and women who surrounded her had excessively fine features, white skin, colourless eyes, fine white hair, high cheekbones, and long, fragile, slender bones. Hermione frankly stared, then looked fixedly at one of the men's hair. She only knew one other person with moonlight fine, pale hair like that. She believed she was looking at Draco's ancestors.  
  
"You are not one of us. How did you find this place?" the man whose hair she had been rudely staring at asked her.  
  
"You speak English!" Hermione said, blinking in amazement.  
  
"No. You speak our language that we gave the Anglo Saxons before recorded time," he replied coolly.  
  
"You're faery folk?" Hermione said with a frown.  
  
"That's what you called us," he replied again, without blinking.  
  
Hermione found their unblinking stares un-nerving. "Did you retreat here?" she asked curiously.  
  
"Yes. When Saint Patrick brought his blasted Christianity into the green isles, we fled. It was a new magic that challenged ours and we did not like it," the man explained with a sneer, the first hint at feeling she had seen.  
  
"I came here by accident. I was aiming for the Pole," Hermione said, hoping they could help her.  
  
"The Pole moves," he said.  
  
"It moves?" Hermione repeated disbelievingly.  
  
"It's magnetic and the earth rotates, so of course the Pole moves," the man said as though Hermione must be very stupid. At that point, Hermione did feel stupid.  
  
"No wonder my apparating didn't work. Its navigation is based on the earth's magnetic fields," she muttered to herself.  
  
"Why are you here at all?" he asked, ignoring her last comment.  
  
"I'm trying to get information on a great enemy of the wizarding community. There have been strange Aurora Borealis in the sky recently and we think it may be a sign that he's on the move again," she said, wondering if they had information and if they would be willing to pass it on.  
  
Whispering broke out amongst the hundred or so people gathered there. "We've seen this strange Aurora. It's bright red and stagnant and doesn't follow the sun's natural phases," the man said calmly.  
  
"Yes! Have you seen any strangers in the area recently?" she asked eagerly.  
  
"You're not one of us," the man said unperturbedly. "And we don't trust you with what we know."  
  
Hermione's shoulders slumped; so much for that idea. Suddenly she remembered Draco. "No, I'm not but I know someone who is descended from your kind. Would you speak to him?"  
  
A whisper of curiosity broke out among the crowd again. "Yes, if you brought him here," the man replied.  
  
"I can do that but how do I find you again? I only got here by accident the first time," Hermione reasoned.  
  
The man reached down and broke off a green crystal from a patch near his feet. "Take this with you. It won't melt, its made of crystal not water. When you apparate, it will pull you directly back here. That's what we grow them for."  
  
Hermione accepted the crystal with thanks. "Can I apparate back to England from here?" The man simply nodded. "Okay, I hope to be back inside of 24 hours. Thank you," she said, before vanishing before their eyes. 


	13. Chapter Twelve, Against the Frost Bit Sk...

Chapter Twelve  
  
"that he came to deceive thee, and to know thy going out and thy coming in, and to know all that thou doest." 2 Samuel 3:25  
  
Hermione apparated straight to the Malfoy Manor front door. She rang the doorbell impatiently and checked her watch. To her amazement, a full day had passed. Suddenly her stomach growled.  
  
A House Elf came to the door and let her into the foyer. Two minutes later Luna came in with a genuine smile. "Hi Hermione! Why are you wearing such heavy robes?" she asked curiously.  
  
"Is Draco here?" Hermione asked anxiously.  
  
"Yes, he's in the grounds talking to the gardener," Luna answered with a frown, picking up on Hermione's urgency. "Follow me."  
  
They walked through the vast (and rather grim) Malfoy Manor and out through a door that led into the gardens. Draco looked up when he saw Luna and Hermione approaching but his expression was unreadable. Rather like those fae creatures under the ice, Hermione reflected with a sudden jolt of recognition.  
  
"Hermione wanted to talk to you," Luna said as they got close enough to be heard. Draco dismissed the house elf head gardener and they wandered back to the manor as a group.  
  
"Draco, I need your help. I followed the mission to the North Pole but got thrown off course - how doesn't matter now - and I fell through the ice into a country below it. The people there look exactly like you Draco. They have your bone structure, your eye colour, your hair, your build - everything. They must be your ancestors. They wouldn't give me any information about Voldemort but they said they would talk to one of their own. Please, I need you to come back with me and speak to them. The information you may get could be vital to helping the mission," Hermione explained tersely but clearly.  
  
Draco was watching her with narrowed eyes. "Trust you to follow that mission when you knew perfectly well everyone was against it," he drawled but began walking more rapidly towards the manor. "We can get warm robes in the house. We have some from the ski-ing holidays we used to go on in Switzerland," he remarked.  
  
"Trust you to have had ski-ing holidays in Switzerland!" Hermione said rolling her eyes. Luna laughed.  
  
"Are you going to come, Luna?" Draco asked her when they got to the right wardrobe.  
  
"Of course, I'm dying to meet your ancestors," she said honestly. "It might explain a lot," she added wryly. Hermione laughed then.  
  
"I'm glad you're not going to tyrannise over Luna and make her stay here," Hermione muttered pointedly as the other two got changed quickly.  
  
"Luna is in no danger from Voldemort. If she was, she sure as hell would be staying here," he said bluntly.  
  
"What makes you think you're alone in this?" Luna asked Hermione with raised eyebrows.  
  
"So I can see. Maybe bossiness is an inherent trait in men," Hermione postulated.  
  
"Well, that doesn't explain you," Draco said coolly, raising his fair brows.  
  
"Remind me why I like you again," Hermione said as they apparated, holding hands over the crystal.  
  
They were in the ice cave for only a second before the crowd apparated again. Luna gasped when she saw so many people identical to Draco around her. Even Draco looked taken aback and he rarely showed emotion explicitly.  
  
The man who had spoken to Hermione before and who was obviously the leader there, examined Draco with his colourless eyes. "Yes, you're one of us even though you have a great deal of wizard blood too."  
  
It was then Hermione noticed the subtle differences. She had always thought of Draco's hair as white but it had just the barest touch of yellow near the roots which showed up only against the icy whiteness of these people's hair. His eyes also had a touch of silver grey whereas these people had no eye colour at all, rather like clear water, which made their unblinking stare completely un-nerving. Although very slender, Draco looked almost robust next to the fragile slenderness of this race too.  
  
"Do you have some information about a stranger in these parts and the red Aurora Borealis?" Draco asked, cutting straight to the chase.  
  
"Yes, perhaps. Would you care to join us for a meal?" the man invited politely. Hermione nodded subtly to Draco and Luna. Refusing hospitality would be rude and besides, she was hungry.  
  
To their amazement, the food was quite typical of the variety of food available in England itself. "We use our magical abilities to procure decent food for these regions. We regularly leave the Arctic for supplies," the man explained seeing their surprise.  
  
He had led them to a smaller cave off the main cave which was furnished with stone tables and chairs, covered in white velvet and gold brocade. As they ate, the man told them what he knew. "The red Aurora Borealis is a fake," he said without preamble. "The real Aurora is still lighting the night sky in its more usual yellow greens. We have seen a dark figure but he has never spoken to us and he only comes out at night. My people have been watching him to ensure he did not intend to either invade or attack our kingdom. He has been here for many years but no-one recalls when he actually arrived. It was as though he suddenly appeared from no-where."  
  
"Or from pure vapour," Hermione murmured, remembering the dark vapour that Voldemort had disintegrated into on the moors and how it had quickly disappeared over the landscape out towards the North Sea.  
  
Draco looked at her sharply, his pale eyes clearly warning her not to give away too much of what they knew. Although these were obviously ancestors of his, he was not naturally trusting.  
  
"What have you observed of his activities?" Luna asked the man seriously.  
  
The man shrugged. "He only comes out at night and usually only on the nights that the fake Aurora appears. It's almost like it's a signal of some kind. However, lately it has looked as though he's making plans to leave. He has been seen sending some of his belongings elsewhere via owl."  
  
Hermione and Luna exchanged alarmed looks but Draco remained impassive. "So he can't be signalling for someone to come to him with the fake Aurora," Hermione deduced. "How odd."  
  
"Unless he wanted to draw someone here while he escaped elsewhere to do his dirty business and thus wouldn't be interrupted by them," Draco said tightly, his pale lips thinning angrily.  
  
Hermione's lips parted in sudden understanding. "Of course," she whispered. "It's a decoy. He wanted to draw all of Dumbledore's most powerful allies to the end of the earth while he went back to London to create havoc," she said fearfully. "The mission isn't in trouble at all but everyone at home is."  
  
"We need to find the mission and get them home as soon as possible," Luna said with a frown. "All our best Aurors and strongest wizards are out of the country, and there's not enough left at home to protect the rest of the wizarding community."  
  
The man watched this discussion impassively and merely nodded when they thanked him for the information and his hospitality. "There's nothing else you can tell us?" Draco asked, as they made their way back into the main cave.  
  
"No, that is all the information we have," he said solemnly.  
  
Hermione got the information on the Pole's current exact position from them and they used this to apparate close to it where Hermione guessed the mission was planned to gather and make camp. They soon found themselves in the midst of a blizzard out in the middle of nowhere and it was dark.  
  
"Can't see a damn thing," Hermione muttered as the stingingly cold wind bit into the tender skin of her face. "Lumos."  
  
"Lumos," the other two repeated, holding up their wands.  
  
Suddenly seemingly out of nowhere a huge polar bear lumbered up to them and into their small pool of light. Great, Hermione thought, I'm going to die by being eaten by a polar bear. Well, there's no dignity or glory in a death like that. She pointed her wand at the bear threateningly but waited.  
  
As they looked anxiously at the magnificent white animal, it stood up on its huge back paws. Hermione's legs went suddenly weak and she took a breath to mutter the petrificus totalus spell.  
  
Then, before she could say it, she noticed it was shrinking and changing shape into a man. She let out her breath. It was an animagus. A grizzly faced, bearded man stood there in heavy brown robes. "You're not part of the mission," he said in English but with a thick Norwegian accent.  
  
"No, are you?" Draco asked him.  
  
"I'm the guide," he replied.  
  
"We know everyone on the mission. We've come to give them some information we've found out by accident," Hermione explained. "It's about Voldemort."  
  
"Follow me," the guide said and turned back into a polar bear suddenly, dropping back on all fours.  
  
They followed the massive beast for a good ten minutes before seeing the dim lights of the camp ahead. By then they were all freezing despite their heavy winter gear. Hermione performed a warming spell over them.  
  
They entered the main tent in the camp, glad to get out of the blinding blizzard. Inside there was Severus, Ron, Harry, Remus, Lupin, Hagrid and several Head Aurors having a meeting. When the three pulled back their hoods, Hermione heard the unmistakable hiss of Severus sucking his breath in sharply. Severus' heart gave a terrible, painful thud of alarm deep in his chest when he saw it was Hermione there at the North Pole, so close to her bitter enemy's location. She glanced at him apologetically, knowing he would be unhappy to see her there. He was looking at her with a deeply shocked expression and fear in the black depths of his deep-set eyes. She went and stood next to him immediately and felt him put one shaking hand on her back.  
  
"I know we're not supposed to be here but we do have important news that needs to be acted on immediately," Hermione said with authority, taking control of the meeting with that one simple statement.  
  
Hermione, Luna and Draco outlined what had happened in the past 48 hours since the Auror mission left. The group gathered in the main tent listened with a mixture of fascination and eventually horror when they realized they had been duped.  
  
"So really, we're in the safest place at the moment. It's most likely that Voldemort is well on his way to London by now," Hermione finished up.  
  
Severus breathed more easily once he heard this than he had since Hermione had appeared there. However, it did mean that the mission had to get back to England immediately. Everyone ran out of the tent to tell the others to pack. Hermione stood in the circle of Severus' arms for a moment. He was too grateful for her safety to be angry that she'd ignored her friends' wishes and put herself in so much potential danger.  
  
Ron and Harry were grilling Draco and Luna about the people who lived in the ice caves while the camp got packed up. Due to the use of magic, they were ready to leave again within the hour. Some senior Aurors had volunteered to carry on to the source of the false Aurora Borealis to see if they could find out more information from Voldemort's base near the Pole and how he had generated the false lights.  
  
Less than two hours after Hermione, Luna and Draco arrived at base camp everyone was back at the Ministry and sending urgent owls out to important contacts. 


	14. Chapter Thirteen, You're My Gravity

Chapter Thirteen  
  
"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered." Genesis 9:2  
  
A few months passed quietly but no-one ever heard from the Aurors left at the North Pole again. The mood in the Ministry grew more and more subdued as no news came through.  
  
Voldemort, if he ever made it back to England, remained inactive. There had been one or two sightings of Voldemort in England on the day that the main party returned from the Pole but these remained unconfirmed.  
  
Dumbledore had spent much time with Luna after the aborted mission, discussing how her extraordinary dreams had matched up with the events of the past few days. "You were right about the ice tunnels as well as the race of people not related to you but strongly associated to you," he reminded her gently.  
  
"Yes," Luna said blankly. "But what about the flames and the black horse- like creature? There was nothing about that," she frowned.  
  
"That may still be to come," Dumbledore said, outwardly comforting but inwardly filled with trepidation for Hermione.  
  
The friends had spent many evenings at each other's homes discussing the possibilities of what might have happened but no-one had any real answers. Hermione remained of the opinion that Voldemort had come back to England that day only to somehow find out that the mission had returned far earlier than anticipated. As a result, he had been forced to put his plans on hold and remain in hiding for the time being. Whether or not he remained in hiding in England or had returned to the North Pole she did not venture to guess. However, the false red Aurora Borealis were not seen in the months following the mission which made her think that he had stayed in England after all.  
  
Severus reserved judgment on the events of the mission but both Ron and Harry seemed to think that the race that lived under the ice had been lying to them. "Why would they make me go and haul Draco back there, only to tell us a bunch of lies?" Hermione argued. "It doesn't make any sense. They had nothing to either lose or gain in telling us what they did, so why lie?"  
  
"Unless they were in the pay of Voldemort," Ron argued, his freckled face creased in a frown.  
  
"How would Voldemort pay them? Chances are he's still very weak and would have little to offer. He doesn't have his old Death Eater friends to help him anymore," Hermione pointed out logically.  
  
"Then again, Voldemort is very persuasive," Severus interjected silkily, playing devil's advocate.  
  
"And how," Hermione agreed. "But I still don't think Voldemort would have anything to offer that race that they would want."  
  
"It's a moot point anyway. The bottom line is, we'll never know. We'll never find their country under the ice again without one of those crystals. Whatever tunnel entrance you fell down that one time Hermione, would be one of a kind. Finding it again would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack," Padma said calmly, as always only interested in practical realities as opposed to unprovable theories.  
  
Hermione, Luna and Draco regretted not asking for another green crystal that would take them back to the ice caves and Draco's ancestors. The one that they had been given had disintegrated upon the one use and none of them had thought to ask for another in the rush to intercept the mission at the North Pole and give the team the information they had gained.  
  
As for Severus, he was far more concerned when he returned from the mission about getting their wedding out of the way before something else happened that made Hermione decide to postpone it again. As it turned out, the wedding went ahead a month after they got back under the dark cloud of the Aurors being missing at the North Pole still. It was a subdued wedding party but neither Hermione nor Severus were apt to care for a big, noisy celebration anyway. Both Ron and Harry's weddings had provided quite enough of that previously.  
  
They had both chosen plain gold bands with the word "Mizpah" inscribed inside to match the ring Severus had given her on her eighteenth birthday. It still felt odd to Hermione to see the thick gold band on Severus' left hand. Somehow it made their bond less private and she was still uncomfortable with that although she knew it was a ridiculous reaction.  
  
Hermione had asked Luna to be her bridesmaid as Luna was the only one of her friends left unmarried and their friendship had become much closer since they had started working together as well. As Luna helped Hermione with her hair before the wedding ceremony, Hermione has smiled and said, "you and Draco are the only bachelors left now."  
  
Luna had smiled back. "Yes but Draco's putting the pressure on. He wants an heir."  
  
"Why does that sound familiar?" Hermione said, rolling her eyes.  
  
Luna laughed. "I'm not sure I'm the best one to give him an heir but he doesn't seem to be interested in finding a better mother for him."  
  
"He loves you," Hermione said with a shrug, knowing she was stating the obvious.  
  
"He's worried about it too," Luna said, carefully pinning up Hermione's thick, unco-operative hair.  
  
"Worried about what?" Hermione asked.  
  
"This weird thing I have with my dreams about other people's memories?" Luna began carefully. "It's genetic. My great-grandmother had it and my grandmother did as well to a lesser degree. It skipped a generation and came out very strongly in me," Luna explained.  
  
"That's quite normal with unusual magical gifts," Hermione said reasonably.  
  
Luna's strange dark green eyes met Hermione's grey ones in the mirror. "Do you know what it's like to see some-one's else's memories? The only memories that are strong enough to linger are the most traumatized and painful ones. You know that from the research we've done. I can explain the memories to you in words and that's horrifying enough but to see these suffering people's memories through their own eyes and to feel what they feel - that can never be explained in words. You're living it with them."  
  
Hermione had never heard Luna sound so serious. It was a side of her Hermione had never seen before. She suddenly realized that there was a lot of unseen suffering that went with a gift like hers. "And you don't want some child of yours to suffer in the same way?" Hermione said gently.  
  
"No," Luna said without hesitation.  
  
Hermione said no more but made a plan to speak to Draco about it soon and see how he saw the situation, mainly because she was nosey but also because she cared about her friends and it was obvious they weren't as happy as they could be.  
  
Hermione and Severus had gone on honeymoon to the mountain forests in Switzerland. "It seems a bit odd to be having a honeymoon when we've been living in each other's pockets for a decade," Hermione commented to him with amusement when he had booked the chalet through a wizarding travel agent.  
  
"You are a romantic fool," he said ironically.  
  
"I'm only here for the sex," Hermione said teasingly.  
  
"Oh good. In that case." he said smoothly and pulled the unresisting Hermione into his embrace.  
  
* * *  
  
When they got back from the honeymoon, Hermione finally got round to having her chat with Draco one day when everyone was visiting the Malfoy Manor for Draco's birthday.  
  
Everyone was admiring the new obsidian fountain in the gardens. Privately, Hermione wondered why the fountain had to match the grim exterior of the Malfoy estate but wisely kept her thoughts to herself.  
  
"Luna mentioned to me that you were wanting an heir for this place one day," Hermione said with feigned casualness as they sat under a marquee on the lawns.  
  
Draco immediately stuck his thumb in his mouth to gnaw worriedly on the nail. It was his only nervous habit. "We've spoken about it but she's not keen," he said, his face and voice carefully expressionless.  
  
"Do you know why?" Hermione asked kindly.  
  
"Yeah. She's afraid she'll pass her gift onto the kid and make him miserable," Draco muttered.  
  
Assuming it's a boy, Hermione thought with a touch of annoyance. "I guess it's something to be concerned about but the heir may not inherit her gift, especially as it only seems to go to the women in her family too," Hermione said mildly.  
  
"Have you ever seen her after one of her dreams, Hermione?" he asked quietly, looking at the ground.  
  
"No," Hermione replied honestly.  
  
"The last dream she had? It was about people living hundreds of years ago who were tortured to death. When she found the history books and pensieves recording the event, and it matched exactly with the details of her dream down to the actual dates - she ran to the bathroom and threw up violently. Then she didn't eat for two days. Her hands shook and she couldn't talk about it without crying all that time," he said, his pale eyes far away and withdrawn. "I hate it. I hate it when it happens to her and I can't do anything to stop it or make it any easier."  
  
"And you couldn't bear for your child to suffer the same way?" Hermione asked softly, her expression compassionate.  
  
He shrugged. "I just don't know if a gift like that is worth it," he murmured.  
  
"It may be awful when it happens but Luna has a good life apart from that. She has you, and a good and useful career, and lots of friends. I think her life is still worthwhile," Hermione observed mildly.  
  
"I tell her that but it's harder for her to see when she's the one living with voices long dead or yet to be born screaming inside her mind," Draco said, his thin face tense.  
  
Hermione sighed but wisely let it go. It wasn't her business after all but she did care about them. 


	15. Chapter Fourteen, Show Me the Meaning of...

A/N: Just fair warning that there are descriptions of historical events in this chapter that could upset some readers. This chapter touches lightly on the warrior culture of the Scythians and its not pleasant reading.  
  
  
  
  
  
Chapter Fourteen  
  
"And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this;" Ezra 9:13  
  
It took a while for Hermione to work up the courage to go back to that evil black hole under the Manor but finally she did. Whenever she did go back to the room underground, she took the small frame with Severus-the-first and Hermatica with her to explain things that she found. She propped their frame up on the lab bench and went back to the nauseating Dark Arts library. She found a volume she had missed the first time with an interesting title, The Earlie Magikal Historie of the Snape Lineage and Historie of the Deathe Eaters.  
  
"And why isn't this in the main library upstairs?" she pondered aloud, taking the book back to the laboratory bench to read. She lit the lantern she had brought with her that time and opened the book.  
  
*"The Scythian soldier scrapes the scalp clean of flesh and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps and hangs them from his bridle rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks by sewing a quantity of these scalps together.....Such as the Scythian customs with respect to scalps. ---- Herodotus, History"  
  
"Oh, nice," Hermione said sarcastically, curling her lip with distaste. "Why would you start a family history like that?"  
  
*"Perhaps the most striking feature of Scythians was the enormous amount of gold they wore and used. The ancient legend tells the story about the one- eyed people, Arimaspians in Scythia who had on-going battle with the griffins who guarded the gold."  
  
"They fought griffins?" Hermione said, perplexed. "These people are mad."  
  
*"The Scythians sprang from the three sons of certain Targitaus, a person of supernatural birth who dwelled in the Black Sea domain. Together the three brothers ruled the land until four golden implements - a plow, a yoke, a battle-ax and a drinking cup - fell from the sky and suddenly began to blaze. Colaxais, the youngest, proved to be the only one of the brothers who could pick up the burning objects, and thus became sole ruler of the Scythian kingdom."  
  
"That explains the family's magical origin very clearly," Hermione murmured.  
  
**"The Scythians were famous for their bloody tribal custom. Warriors not only cut off the heads of slain enemies but also made leather-bound drinking cups from their enemies' skulls. They lined these grisly trophies with gold and proudly displayed them to impress their guests."  
  
"Yeah and I'd invite these people over for dinner, for sure," Hermione muttered sarcastically.  
  
**"The act of war was one in which the Scythian women participated in equally with the men. Scythian women were tattooed like their mates, and the ancient historian Diordorus commented that Scythian women 'fight like the men and are nowise inferior to them in bravery'.  
  
"Maybe I should bring this to Severus' attention next time he tells me I should stay home rather than go on a mission," Hermione said, glowering.  
  
"He doesn't want you to stay home because you're a woman but because you're the black unicorn and thus Voldemort's prime target," Severus-the-first reminded her sternly.  
  
Hermione merely snorted. "He's just bossy," she said. Further on the book described the history of the other main branch of the family.  
  
***"During the Golden Age of Islam, the Moorish Empire was the most advanced state in the world. Cordova was the most wonderful city of the tenth century; the streets were well-paved, with raised sidewalks for pedestrians. Public baths numbered in the hundreds at a time when cleanliness in Christian Europe was regarded a sin. Moorish monarchs dwelt in splendid palaces, while the crowned heads of England, France, and Germany lived in big barns, lacking both windows and chimneys, with only a hole in the roof for the emission of smoke."  
  
"The Moors had an insatiable lust for knowledge, and acquired it from East and West, translating into Arabic all they could find, even ransacking monasteries for rare books. One king had a private library of 600,000 books. In Moorish Spain education was available to the most humble, while in Christian Europe 99% of the populace were illiterate, including kings. The incredible city of Cordova had 800 public schools. The Moors made great advances in mathematics, physics, astronomy, medicine, botany, chemistry. The Moors also introduced the first shooting mechanisms or rifles known as firesticks which revolutionized European military science, ultimately causing their downfall when their enemies used gunpowder to drive them back into Africa. Their contributions to European civilization were vast."  
  
"And to think you were a Prince in Cordova," Hermione said to Severus-the- first who was looking rather smug at that point as she'd read those paragraphs out loud.  
  
"I was the Prince of Cordova," he said with a touch of arrogance.  
  
"They were amazing times," Hermatica said wistfully.  
  
Severus-the-first looked at Hermatica with glittering black eyes so un- nervingly similar to Hermione's Severus' eyes. "You should have been there with me, by my side," he said, his deep voice sounding gravelly and so familiar to Hermione.  
  
Hermatica merely took his hand and leaned against him. "It's a long time ago now but your accomplishments should never be forgotten," she said softly.  
  
****"While the rest of Europe was engulfed in the Dark Ages, a time of deep superstition and ignorance, it was the Moors who were building a civilisation unparalleled since the time of the Roman Empire. With an estimated force of only 20,000 it is often asked how an army of so few could invade and conquer an area the size of the Iberian peninsula with such ease. They had one advantage that would prove to be decisive when it came to the invasion and this was their mastery of gunpowder. They saw enormous potential in the area and started to develop huge tracts of land for agricultural purposes. Due to the dry climates of North Africa, the Arabs were masters of irrigation and in only a few short years they transformed the area into a region of vast agricultural wealth and prosperity and introduced new crops such as rice, asparagus, artichokes and melons."  
  
"Unfortunately the occupied people of Andalucía had no answer to the Moors' superior knowledge, agricultural acumen or technological prowess. On a more positive note they were dragged from an era of ignorance and superstition, where witchcraft was commonly held to be the biggest threat to society."  
  
"And what greater damning consequence of ignorance could there be than a fear of witches and wizards?" Severus-the-first asked with the characteristic Snape sneer.  
  
"Quite," Hermione agreed.  
  
"Thanks to their conquerors, there was no country in Europe as advanced as Al-Andalus and there were more prosperous towns and villages in this region than anywhere else in Spain. Another reason for the Moors' success as a civilisation was that unlike Spanish Christianity, which prevented curiosity about many aspects of life on the grounds that it was heretical, the Arab invaders were comparatively free-thinking and scholars were granted far more intellectual freedom to discuss and to teach issues which had evaded the early Christians. Moreover, different religions were free to live side by side, which paved the way for greater social tolerance and development.  
  
"In particular, the Arabs were masters of astrology and medicine, and such was the degree of their success in these fields that even today many mathematical and astrological terms remain in Arabic. Their medical knowledge was the greatest in the world and while other countries in Europe still believed in leeches and the power of prayer to cure ills, the Arab settlers were already experimenting with surgery that would form the basis of modern day medicine.  
  
"The most progressive period during the Moorish occupation came when the leaders on the Iberian peninsula decided that they wanted greater independence from the Middle East. They persuaded the region's finest artists, scholars and architects to come to Al-Andalus and turned Córdoba into Europe's greatest city, with a population of over a quarter of a million. As in the days of the Roman Empire, the city's success was dependent on its technology and Córdoba boasted a sophisticated sewage system, universities, hospitals and its famous Mosque."  
  
"And to think those uneducated and unwashed Christians used the knowledge we gave them to drive us out of the land we had conquered, settled and made prosperous," Severus-the-first mocked.  
  
"No-one could withstand the Spanish Inquisition. It was sophisticated guerilla warfare that attacked every part of a person; the body, soul and spirit," Hermione sighed. Severus-the-first brooded darkly on the injustice to his bloodline. "There is a great legacy of cruelty from the Scythian side," Hermione reflected.  
  
"My brother's wife's side of the family. That bastard should never have married that little whore. Still, she did have a powerful if evil magical legacy from that race," he said meditatively with a touch of viciousness.  
  
"I wonder if that legacy of evil somehow has polluted the bloodline," Hermione postulated.  
  
"Nothing but murderers, thieves, whores and more recently bloody Death Eaters in almost every generation. That's why there's hope now, Hermione. The current heir, your Severus, may have gotten off to a bad start in life but he pulled himself right by some miracle. Now because of you, he has a reason to live and not just that but to carry on the Snape name with pride. He can teach his children better values than those he himself was exposed to but he needs your help," Severus, the first said with persuasiveness and passion, his dark eyes glowing. "Maybe the two of you can erase the evil heritage."  
  
"Using what spell?" Hermione said a touch despairingly.  
  
"The most powerful one of all," Hermatica said simply. "Love."  
  
* Sourced from http://www.silk-road.com/artl/scythian.shtml  
  
** Sourced from http://www.hempbc.com/magazine/jul95/scythians.html  
  
*** Sourced from http://www.ibiblio.org/nge/blacked/bl6.html  
  
**** Sourced from http://www.marbellalife.com/history-and-culture/moorish- occupation.html 


	16. Chapter Fifteen, 'Cause Worry is Wastefu...

Chapter Fifteen  
  
"and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Proverbs 18:24  
  
"I am so sick of all this doom and gloom," Hermione announced as she sat drinking a butterbeer with Ron and Harry at the Leaky Cauldron. Padma and Ginny were baby clothes shopping so Ron and Harry had escaped to the pub with Hermione in order to complain about how sore their feet were.  
  
"I know what you mean 'Mione," Ron said glumly. "I'm so sick of being a responsible adult with the weight of the world on my shoulders. With Voldemort on the loose and no-one knowing when he's going to attack next, we never relax or do anything fun anymore. We're all too tense."  
  
"I want to be a kid again," Hermione sniffed.  
  
"Well, maybe for just one day," Harry conceded with a grin.  
  
"We should just take off for a whole day and pretend we're teenagers again," Hermione said dreamily, staring into space.  
  
"We haven't done anything with just the three of us for ages," Ron complained.  
  
"Yeah, we used to be the bold, bad three," Harry said with a laugh. "Now we're all serious and responsible with families and Voldemort's return hanging over us."  
  
"Voldemort was there when we were teenagers too," Hermione reminded him.  
  
"Yes but. it didn't seem so serious then," Harry said with a slight frown of puzzlement.  
  
"We were too dumb to be scared and we've got a lot more to lose now," Hermione replied flatly.  
  
"Let's be too dumb to be scared again, just for one day," Ron suggested enthusiastically.  
  
A slow grin spread over Hermione's face. Ron and Harry remembered it well, and answered it with one of their own. They joined hands round the table and began scheming.  
  
* * *  
  
The next day was Sunday and early in the morning, Ron and Harry and Hermione met at Hermione's cottage in Hogsborough. They had owls waiting to send to their spouses which they sent off just before climbing into Hermione's car - the same one she had inherited from her parents 10 years before.  
  
Hermione jacked up the car stereo and they set off for Brighton on the South coast. They skirted London on the M25 and were soon on the A23 to Brighton and Hove.  
  
Ron's first vote for the CD player was Madonna.  
  
*"If we took a holiday  
  
Took some time to celebrate  
  
Just one day out of life  
  
It would be, it would be so nice"  
  
Ron had discovered Madonna in Hermione's CD collection as a teenager and was still passionately devoted to her music. He belted out the songs in a voice horribly off-key and not at all suited for singing. Not that Hermione and Harry cared, they just joined in.  
  
The day seemed to have been specially ordered just for them. The sun was shining clear out of a cloudless blue sky, a rare occurrence indeed in England even in the Spring months. The new, pale green leaves re-sprouting from the tree branches shone in the sunlight as though they had been polished. The sun was unusually warm for April and the air smelt clean as they neared the coast.  
  
All three were grinning madly, feeling like kids who were playing hooky from school. Not that Hermione ever had but that's the way she felt.  
  
*"Get into the groove  
  
Boy you've got to prove  
  
Your love to me, yeah  
  
Get up on your feet, yeah  
  
Step to the beat  
  
Boy what will it be"  
  
They sang loudly and cheerfully. Other drivers on the highway hooted in a friendly manner or yelled and waved when they saw the three friends having such a good time.  
  
Once at Brighton, they went directly to the pier. "I am so going to the funfair," Hermione said immediately, making her way there with great determination.  
  
"Cool," Ron said, stopping first for a dagwood dog with tomato sauce.  
  
"You better not throw that up on the roller coaster," Harry said, grinning.  
  
"I'm for the white water flume ride," Hermione said, joining the short line.  
  
"Excellent!" Harry said, green eyes gleaming.  
  
Ron looked a bit green as they got off the other end, having stuffed down his dagwood dog in order to get on the ride.  
  
"That was so good!" Hermione said enthusiastically. "How about the mouse roller coaster now?"  
  
They spent all morning on the rides until lunchtime when they went and got some fish and chips with a huge ice cream for dessert. Hermione still couldn't believe how much Ron could eat and still be so boney. That afternoon, they went to the side-shows and tried their hand at all sorts of ludicrous games. As they passed by the pitchers tent, something caught Hermione's eye that made her stop still and stare.  
  
"What is it 'Mione?" Harry asked, seeing her gaze. She just pointed. Harry's mouth dropped open. "It can't be," he said in disbelief but it was. Hanging up as a prize was a fluffy black unicorn with a gold horn made out of glittery cloth. "I'll win it for you 'Mione," Harry said and went up and bought 3 pitching balls.  
  
Of course, the national Quiddich star had no problem getting the highest score in a pitching game and the unicorn was soon in Hermione's arms. "Thanks Harry," Hermione almost whispered, examining the toy. It was not exactly right, as the toy's eyes were button black rather than red and gold. She clutched it and smiled at Harry. "It's so cute!" she hugged him tight and Harry grinned. He still had a soft spot for Hermione.  
  
Ron decided he needed to take a toy home for Molly, so he had a go at the shooting range and won a little purple dragon. Hermione laughed when she saw it. "I hope it doesn't start breathing fire if Lily sees it when she'd playing with Molly," she said.  
  
Between the two boys, they won enough toys for each of their children and spouses. "Are you going to get anything for Severus?" Ron asked, munching on donuts and clutching numerous brightly coloured, fluffy things.  
  
"I don't think he'd want anything from a side-show," Hermione said honestly, looking around ruefully.  
  
"No, that's true," Ron agreed.  
  
Mid-afternoon, they went back to the car and piled all their winnings in the boot then went back to the bar on the pier. They went to Horatio's to enjoy the beer garden and the spectacular panoramic views. "This has been the best day for a long time. Thank you, guys," Hermione said, looking more genuinely happy and relaxed than she had since Christmas.  
  
"This has been a great day," Ron agreed, eating a bag of peanuts. "How come we didn't run away and become kids again before now?"  
  
"We didn't think of it but we have now," Harry said, his green eyes gleaming with fun.  
  
"Padma is gonna kill me for going off and having fun without her," Ron commented, looking slightly worried for a millisecond.  
  
"I think she'll understand," Hermione said. "After all, she knew how close we were at Hogwarts and the special thing we have."  
  
"It was the mountain troll that started it," Harry said, smiling at the memory.  
  
"You two saved me," Hermione said, smiling at her boys.  
  
"Yeah and then you saved us from detention," Ron added, still looking grateful over fifteen years on.  
  
"I reckon Snape would have made us clean out the infirmary bed pans without magic for detention if he could have," Harry said.  
  
Hermione threw back her head and laughed. "I'm sure he would have too!" At around 6pm, they went across to Offshore Karaoke bar. "Are you going to sing Madonna, Ron?" Hermione asked anxiously.  
  
"What of it?" he asked loftily.  
  
"Nuthin'," Hermione lied, looking innocent.  
  
*"I got brothers, I got some sisters too  
  
Stuck in the middle tell you what I'm gonna do  
  
Gonna get out of here, I'm gonna leave this place  
  
So I can forget every single hungry face  
  
I'm tired of sharing all the hand me downs  
  
To get attention I must always be the clown  
  
I wanna be different, I wanna be on my own  
  
But Daddy said listen, you will always have a home  
  
"Keep it together in the family  
  
They're a reminder of your history  
  
Brothers and sisters they hold the key  
  
To your heart and your soul  
  
Don't forget that your family is gold"  
  
Ron sang the song very badly but Hermione got tears in her eyes suddenly. Coming from the home she did, Harry and Ron had been more like family than her real one. She guessed that Harry felt the same. Although Ron had a big and loving family, it was too big for him to get all the attention he craved. Somehow, the three had bonded together at Hogwarts through all their (literally) death-defying adventures and the tie ran deep. She could never have run away from being an adult for a day with anyone else but her boys. No-one would have even understood how she felt or what she needed, not even Severus.  
  
Hermione and Harry sat on a couch, leaning against each other companionably as Ron sang some more Madonna songs excruciatingly off-key. Hermione and Harry refused to inflict their voices on anyone so later, the three sat there leaning against each other laughing at the bad performances of strangers or cheering on the rare good voices.  
  
By 10pm, Harry and Ron's eyelids were drooping from the effects of the fresh sea air and sunshine. Hermione looked at one dark head on one of her shoulders and the bright red head on the other and announced it was time to leave.  
  
They drove back listening to Dido, one of Hermione's favourite CDs. "Chick music," Ron said with a shake of his red head.  
  
"Pardon me but you're half asleep anyway. I need to stay awake until we get back to Hogsborough as neither of you heroes can drive," Hermione laughed.  
  
**"I want to thank you for giving me the best day of my life  
  
Oh just to be with you is having the best day of my life"  
  
She sang softly as the boys dozed. She woke them up at her cottage and they said a sleepy good-bye before floo-ing home. "That was the best day," Ron said sleepily, hugging her hard.  
  
"Yeah," Hermione agreed, stroking his firey head and then waving him off loaded down with side-show toys for his kids.  
  
"It was your idea, 'Mione," Harry said affectionately.  
  
"But you guys made it work and made it special," she said, her eyes full of warmth. In her heart of hearts, much as she loved Ron, Harry held a special place in her heart. He was 'the boy who lived' as well as her friend. There was just something extra special about Harry Potter.  
  
They hugged and she waved him off cheerfully, stepping into her fireplace soon after him to go back to the Manor and still clutching her black unicorn plushie. She and Severus had decided to stay on the in the Manor permanently now they were married and simply apparate to work each day. Hermione still couldn't find it in herself to sell the Hogsborough cottage that held so many good memories for herself and Severus, and so had simply shut it up for the time being.  
  
Severus was waiting up for her in the main sitting room when she got back, looking sleepy. "Hello," Hermione said to him tiredly and showed him her plushie as she sat on his lap. "Look. Isn't it darling? Harry won it for me at the side show," she said and yawned hugely.  
  
Severus' face froze into a mask when he saw what it was. "You got this from the side show?" he asked disbelievingly.  
  
"Mmmm," Hermione said, burying her face in Severus' shoulder comfortably and breathing in his incense-like smell.  
  
"That's rather too much of a coincidence for me," he said, his deep-set eyes narrowed.  
  
"Yes. It did feel odd when I saw it," she replied, fiddling with the front of his robe absently.  
  
"It's late. We should go to bed," Severus said quietly, looking down at his wife's peaceful and contented face. It relieved him to see her without the strained expression she wore so often lately.  
  
"Yes," Hermione sighed and they got up to go to their room.  
  
* Lyrics to Madonna's 'Holiday' and 'Get into the Groove' and 'Keep it Together' * Lyrics to Dido's 'Thank you'. 


	17. Chapter Sixteen, Dance with the Devil

A/N: Once again, a warning that there are descriptions of historical events in this chapter that could upset some readers. This chapter describes explicitly the warrior culture and history of the Wallachians, and it is extremely unpleasant reading. Detailed descriptions of torture are included. It does have some relevance to Snape and Voldemort's past however and the relationship between their histories, so it is relevant to the plot.  
  
Chapter Sixteen  
  
"Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace from this people" Jeremiah 16:5  
  
It was hard for Hermione to keep going back down to the secret room under the Manor but there was so much information there about the Death Eaters and the Snape family history that she found herself there every now and again when she could screw up her courage to face the huge, snarling hound and oppressive tunnel.  
  
She had still not decided what to do about the room, whether or not to call in Padma's team to help her dismantle the place and destroy the dangerous items or just try and seal it up herself and hope no-one ever found it. It was a small hope, she knew. There would always be people who would be drawn to resources like these for the wrong reasons. For the wizarding world's safety and the good of the Snape line, it should be destroyed. She was reluctant to do it without Severus' knowledge however. Although the Manor was now technically as much her's as Severus', she didn't feel that way about it. Severus had a connection with the place going back centuries via blood. She had just married into the line.  
  
"I'll have to tell him myself one day," Hermione said quietly to Hermatica and Severus-the-first in their small frame on the lab bench.  
  
They looked at her with concern. "Perhaps it would be for the best," Severus-the-first agreed reluctantly.  
  
Hermione nodded and sighed. "I just don't know when would be the right time," she murmured.  
  
She got up and took the book of family history off the shelves again. "I got as far as reading about the Moors and Scythians last time," she commented to her companions in the frame. "I'd like to read more."  
  
"The legends surrounding Count Dracula and his animagus as a magical hound*** (known as a shuk** in the British Isles),"  
  
"A shuk?" Hermione repeated outloud. "Harry's animagus if he ever used it would be a shuk. Did I mention that his animagus was found in seventh year to be a black hound?" she asked the pair.  
  
"No dear," Hermatica said with interest, being quite familiar with all of Hermione's and Severus' friends by then.  
  
"That means that not only does Harry have Voldemort's twin wand, he also has the same animagus as Voldemort's ancestor," she observed. "There are some odd connections between those two. Almost like they're opposite poles of the same magnet or something."  
  
"Very likely," Severus-the-first said. Hermione kept reading,  
  
"are quite true and are based on the real events of when Vlad Tepes, a Prince of Wallachia in the fifteenth century, came to Britian in the eighteenth century in his vampire form to settle here. Unlike the legend, Vlad was not hunted down and destroyed by Englishmen but began a new life and family there. Eventually, he returned to his native Romania a century later but one branch of his family remained and became part of the wizarding community. Tom Riddle, later Lord Voldemort, came from that branch."  
  
"Well, that explains fucking everything," Hermione snorted. "Do you want to hear about Vlad Tepes, Voldemort's ancestor?" she asked them. They nodded. "I'll just read you extracts," Hermione added.  
  
**" Wallachia is a provence of Romania bordered to the north by Transylvania and Moldavia, to the east by the Black Sea and to the south by Bulgaria.  
  
*"There were large stakes on which they could see the impaled bodies of men, women, and children, about twenty thousand of them. There were babies clinging to their mothers on the stakes, and birds had made nests in their breasts. Impalement was an especially sadistic means of execution, as victims would suffer excruciating pain for hours, even days, until death came. It appears that Vlad was determined at times to administer it in ways that would ensure the longest possible period of suffering for the victim.  
  
"He had some of his people buried naked up to the navel and had them shot at. He also had some roasted and flayed. He had a large pot made and boards with holes fastened over it and had people's heads shoved through there and imprisoned them in this. And he had the pot filled with water and a big fire made under the pot and thus let the people cry out pitiably until they were boiled quite to death.  
  
Hermione sighed and shook her head with a grim expression but kept reading aloud,  
  
"About three hundred gypsies came into his country. Then he selected the best three of them and had them roasted; these the others had to eat.  
  
"The poor and crippled arrived in the city and they were ushered into a great hall where a fabulous feast was prepared for them. When Dracula himself made an appearance. 'What else do you desire? Do you want to be without cares, lacking nothing in this world,' asked the prince. When they responded positively Dracula ordered the hall boarded up and set on fire."  
  
Severus-the-first made a derisive noise and Hermione glanced up briefly to see a sneer of disgust on his hawkish face. His dark eyes looked haunted however, so similar in expression to her own Severus whenever he was deeply disturbed. She bent over the book again and continued,  
  
"Some Italian ambassadors were sent to him. He asked them why they did not take their caps off, too. They said it was their custom, and they did not even remove them for the Emperor. Dracula said, 'I wish to reinforce this for you.' He immediately had their caps nailed firmly on their heads so that their caps would not fall off and their custom would remain."  
  
"Some diplomat!" Severus-the-first spat. "No wonder he was never able to establish truly successful alliances and spent his life hunted like a dog by his enemies."  
  
**** "Dracula came through the forest with his servants and had all the Wallachians of both sexes tracked down, and he was able to bring so many together that he let them get piled up in a bunch and he cut them up like cabbage with swords, sabers and knives; as for their chaplain and the others whom he did not kill there, he led them back home and had them impaled. And he had the village completely burned up with their goods and it is said that there were more than 30,000 men."  
  
"A famous woodcut shows Vlad having a meal while impaled victims are dying around him. As he eats, his henchmen are hacking off limbs of other victims right next to his table. He also roasted the children of mothers and they had to eat the children themselves."  
  
"It almost makes Voldemort sound like he was falling down on the job, doesn't it?" Hermione said, her loathing evident in her voice. "Not even he lives up to the madness of his ancestor."  
  
Hermatica looked deeply shocked. "Bad blood. It's all bad blood," Hermatica murmured.  
  
"You know what else is interesting?" Hermione mused, propping her sharp chin in one hand. "Voldemort's ancestors were the bitter enemies of the Ottomans; the Ottomans defeated Wallachia devastatingly during Vlad's own lifetime and rule. The Ottomans have ancestors in common with the Scythians via their common descent from the Mongols. Historically speaking, Severus and Voldemort's ancestors are enemies - not allies at all."  
  
Severus-the-first nodded consideringly. "You're right. I wonder if Voldemort knows enough about his own family history to know that," he speculated.  
  
"I doubt it. Voldemort wouldn't have made allies through the Death Eaters with the Snape clan if he had known. Makes you wonder though, whether the Snapes were ever destined to be allies of Voldemort's for very long. It goes against the blood," she postulated.  
  
"I wonder if Vlad Tepes is still alive in Romania," Severus-the-first reflected.  
  
"Why are you interested in all this family history, and how the blood lines and ancestry works Hermione?" Hermatica asked curiously. "How will it help you?"  
  
Hermione frowned. How did she explain it? "Have you ever heard of iniquity?" she asked.  
  
They looked at her blankly. "No," they chorused.  
  
"Sin?" she asked hopefully.  
  
"Isn't that a Christian concept?" Severus-the-first asked, not having a high opinion of Christians as they were merely unwashed barbarians in Europe when he knew of them. He also had no real understanding of their beliefs either through sheer lack of interest.  
  
"Yes. There are 3 types of sin; transgressions, mortal and iniquity," Hermione began lecturing. Severus-the-first and Hermatica looked frankly confused. "Transgressions are minor sins that are bad but won't land you in hell. Mortal sins are the really bad ones that will land you in hell - things like murder and adultery. Iniquity is sin carried down the generations in your family. You know, *'the sins of the father are visited upon the child' and so forth," Hermione continued.  
  
"You can go to hell for adultery?" Severus-the-first pondered. "There must be a heck of a lot of people frying."  
  
"I'm just telling you the definitions, okay? This is going somewhere, have patience," Hermione said irritably. "Now it's iniquity I'm concerned with. If sin is carried down generations in families, I'm surprised that the Snape line has survived as long as it has," she said.  
  
"There have been plenty of decent Snapes," Severus-the-first bristled. "Just not recently."  
  
"Er, hello! What about the Scythian ancestors with their skull cups and scalp serviettes? What about the number of people slaughtered when the Moors conquered Andalucia? What about the damn Death Eaters and that 30 year old blood on the wall?" Hermione said, pointing to the object lesson in the room.  
  
"So, what are you saying? The Snape line is doomed?" Hermatica asked with concern.  
  
"No, because the curse of iniquity can be broken," Hermione replied.  
  
"How?" Severus-the-first asked with a frown.  
  
"Through blood," Hermione replied simply. That was something that Severus- the-first and Hermatica understood all too well. The knowledge of the magical properties of blood was known in all cultures and all civilizations.  
  
"Whose blood?" Severus-the-first asked stiffly. "Do we have to sacrifice someone? Because I don't approve of that kind of magic."  
  
"No! It's already been done. He's already died but his blood can still break the curse," Hermione explained.  
  
"For just anyone?" he asked skeptically.  
  
"Yep," Hermione said cheerfully.  
  
"How does it work?" he asked curiously.  
  
"You just use his name. It's a Word of Great Power," Hermione explained. That was something else Hermatica and Severus-the-first understood. It was a basic piece of magical knowledge. Using the correct name of something gave that person enormous power over that thing. Certain names held their own power and were used in spells and charms.  
  
"He must have been a great and powerful magician," Severus-the-first said speculatively. "In order for that one blood sacrifice and his name to have so much authority."  
  
Hermione smiled slowly. "The greatest magician ever," she replied.  
  
Suddenly Hermione heard low snarling behind her, as though from an enormous animal and she spun around in her seat in fright.  
  
  
  
* Exodus 34:7 - "Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."  
  
A/N - Okay, do not give me a hard time about my theology! I can't remember where I learnt about the 3 types of sin and the Catholic Encyclopedia catagorises it differently, so it must have been my Protestant/Pentecostal relations I heard it from. Anyway, it's really just an interesting plot devise. ;)  
  
** "One of the most impressive phantoms and one of the best known in Norfolk is Old Shuk (from the Anglo-Saxon, Scucca or Sceocca, the early native word for Satan), a demon dog as big as a fair-sized calf that pads along noiselessly under the shadow of the hedgerows tracking the steps of lonely wayfarers and terrifying them with the wicked glare of his yellow eyes. To meet him means death within the year to the unhappy beholder." A J Wentworth. Sourced from a thread on www.Ezboard.com. Also check out http://michael.spiralwave.co.uk/legends/shuk.htm  
  
*** See Bram Stoker's original version of "Dracula" when the Count lands at Whitby in the form of a huge, black hound.  
  
**** Information on Vlad Tepes taken from several internet sites dealing with the history of Wallachia and the life of Vlad Tepes. 


	18. Chapter Seventeen, It Bleeds and Aches

Chapter Seventeen  
  
"They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces" Ezekial 7:18  
  
She turned around quickly in her chair to see the back of the huge illusion hound that guarded the entry. She glanced in horror at Severus-the-first and Hermatica but then realized that it was Severus himself standing in front of the dog with his wand raised.  
  
"It's an illusion, Severus. Just take a step forward!" Hermione called.  
  
A second later, a pale Severus walked across the threshold and scowled darkly at her. "What is this place?" he hissed, sweeping over to where she sat.  
  
She looked at him wretchedly, not wanting to tell him but he would find out soon enough. She didn't answer, just let him stalk around the room examining the place the way she had herself on the first visit. His breath hissed between his teeth when he came to the torture instruments and his face was flooded with horror. He opened his lips to speak but no sound came out.  
  
He looked at her sharply from underneath his heavy, dark brows. "What have you already found out?" he demanded.  
  
She pointed to the wall where she had done the blood test. "The blood stain there is only 30 years old," she said almost apologetically. To her amazement, Severus suddenly staggered as though his legs couldn't hold him. Hermione was up in a flash and put her arm around him. She led him quickly back to one of the seats, remembering her own reaction was similar.  
  
She had never seen Severus show weakness like that. Not even once in all the years she had known him since she was eleven years old and had started at Hogwarts. "I didn't want to tell you," she said with a sigh. "I knew it would hurt you." She looked at his downbent head and shaking hands miserably.  
  
"My parents were murderers. I should have known," he said in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper, covering his face with both hands. He suddenly glanced up at Hermatica and Severus-the-first. "Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded through clenched teeth.  
  
"Because we knew you would take it onto yourself. You were always a sensitive boy," Hermatica said kindly but without apology.  
  
"The blood tells," he said bitterly to no-one in particular. "I was no better. Why am I so shocked?"  
  
"You didn't murder innocent people," Hermione said compassionately, sitting down opposite him.  
  
"I may as well have done. Spying on them for Voldemort was their death sentence. It would have been kinder to have killed them myself," he said viciously.  
  
"You didn't know what happened to them after you passed on the information until the day you left the Death Eaters and turned yourself in," Hermione reminded him.  
  
"That's being pedantic, Hermione. I knew Voldemort was most likely harming them, I just believed that if I didn't know the details then I wasn't guilty. But I was," he said with self-loathing, shaking his dark head.  
  
Hermione didn't know what to say to comfort him. She knew there were mitigating factors that explained to a certain extent his time with the Death Eaters. They may not have cancelled out his guilt but went a long way to illuminating his actions.  
  
His beautiful hands were limp in his lap and Hermione felt despondent. "I shouldn't pass it on," he said, agony threaded through his words. Hermione frowned at him, not understanding. She looked at him questioningly. "I shouldn't pass on this tainted, evil blood," he muttered.  
  
"First of all, you were not like your parents. You didn't even know about this place. They knew better than to introduce you to all this just as Draco's parents knew better than to tell him the full truth about the Death Eaters as well," Hermione said, once again reflecting how very similar in situation and temprement that Severus and Draco were in a lot of ways. "If you escaped being like your parents then there is no reason to believe that your child will turn out to be a murderer like his grandparents."  
  
"Not just the grandparents, Hermione. It's all the way back to his brother," Severus said, pointing to Severus-the-first whose murdering brother he was descended from.  
  
"There have been generation upon generation of normal, peaceful witches and wizards in this family," Severus-the-first said stiffly. "It is only every now and then that we encounter bad witches and wizards like your parents."  
  
"Exactly!" Hermione said pointedly. "So, it's your choice Severus. We can have children and do our best to bring them up with the right values or you can just give up in despair."  
  
He looked at her steadily from his black eyes. It was always hard to read the expression in them but they were compelling now. She met his gaze unflinchingly with a level, steely grey one. "Do you think we can do it?" he asked eventually, very seriously.  
  
"You're asking a Gryffindor. Of course I do!" Hermione replied, not breaking his gaze but then smiling warmly. Severus felt the warmth of that smile spread throughout his body like a healing balm. He began to believe it too just a little, little bit.  
  
"What were you reading?" he asked, looking over at the heavy tome she had open and glancing with repressed anger at the Dark Arts library.  
  
"Family and Death Eater history," she said bluntly.  
  
"Well, I guarantee that was pleasant reading," he said sarcastically, his mouth thinning in distaste.  
  
"Some interesting information on Voldemort," she said getting up to bring the book round to where he was sitting and pointing out the passages she'd read earlier.  
  
Severus' face twisted with revulsion as he read it. "More bad blood," he spat.  
  
"It's interesting that the rest of the descendents of Vlad obviously lead peaceful lives. There is only one Voldemort, thank goodness," Hermione observed before Severus got carried away with the notion of poisoned bloodlines again.  
  
"I'd bet a great number of them were Death Eaters," Severus said with abhorrence.  
  
"We don't know that for sure. There were a great many Death Eaters not related to each other at all. Look at the Snapes and Malfoys, there is no connection there," Hermione said contemplatively.  
  
"No, totally different ancestors in fact," Severus conceded remembering that Draco's ancestors were fae and his own were from magical beings from Arabia and the Russian Steppes.  
  
"Are you going to dismantle this place?" Hermione asked quietly.  
  
"Yes but properly. I'll speak to Padma and Dumbledore about the best way to go about it," he said, running one hand through his longish, ebony hair. "We may as well gather as much information as we can from this place the same as we did when its equivalent at the Malfoy estate was dismantled 10 years ago. I should have guessed there was a room like this like the one under the Malfoy Manor. I wonder how many other Death Eater homes have one," Severus said, his pale lips twisted.  
  
"It's probably only the large homes like this one," Hermione said. "How did you find me today?" Hermione asked. "Location spell?"  
  
"Yes," Severus said shortly. "I was worried when I couldn't find you anywhere in the Manor and there was no note. I don't like it when you disappear. I'm always afraid that you might transform and get into serious trouble."  
  
Hermione sighed. "I know, I'm sorry. I actually didn't realize I had been gone for a long time. This book is very useful and I got rather absorbed in it. I think Dumbledore would like to keep that one for reference," she said, indicating the tome that Severus currently had in his hands. "How did you get the password?" she asked curiously.  
  
"Good knowledge of the magical side of the family history. It was certain that my excessively proud parents would have chosen something to do with our magical heritage," he shrugged and stood up. "I've had enough of this place for one day. Let's go and tell Dumbledore what we've found," he said, putting the tome back on the lab bench.  
  
Hermione nodded gratefully and picking up the frame with Hermatica and Severus-the-first in it, she followed Severus out.  
  
They went directly to Dumbledore's office from a fireplace in the decrepit West Wing. As always, he was pleased to see them and ordered hot chocolate for them both. Severus couldn't stomach his after his recent discovery and sat slumped apathetically in one of Dumbledore's armchairs.  
  
Hermione glanced at Severus' closed face and began to tell the story herself. "We found a Dark Arts room under the Snape Manor. Or rather, I found it and then Severus found me," she said, staring into the cocoa.  
  
Dumbledore nodded. "I was sure there was one in the Manor somewhere," he said calmly without surprise.  
  
Hermione went on to tell Dumbledore about the Darke Creatures book and the information it contained, and outlined the connection between the Snape and Riddle ancestors. "Destined to be enemies after all, eh Severus?" Dumbledore said in amusement.  
  
Severus merely shrugged sullenly but refused to say anything. He was ashamed of what would come to light about his family when the room was dismantled but he knew it had to be done. He didn't have to like having so much about himself exposed, however.  
  
They discussed the dismantling of the room but there was no hurry about it. With few or no Death Eaters still active in England and Severus inhabiting the Manor, there was little chance that anyone would try and break into it and use the ghastly things therein.  
  
Once the unpleasant part of the discussion was over, Dumbledore tried to lighten the mood. "I've been spending a lot of time with that remarkable child Lily," he said conversationally.  
  
"Do you know why she's so advanced so young?" Hermione asked with genuine curiousity.  
  
"I have my suspicions," Dumbledore said stirring his second cup of hot chocolate thoughtfully. "It's a combination of factors, I believe. First of all she's Harry's child and Harry, as we all know is a remarkable wizard."  
  
Severus snorted at that pronouncement but didn't say anything. Dumbledore glanced at him with amusement.  
  
"Secondly, she's the grand-daughter of a witch and wizard that Voldemort murdered - Lily and James, Harry's own parents. Lastly, her mother Ginny is from a very old and magically powerful wizarding family," he continued. "That is a dominant combination of genetics and circumstances surrounding her."  
  
Severus snorted a second time at the mention of the Weasleys.  
  
"I suspect that she may be particularly dangerous to Voldemort," Dumbledore speculated almost to himself.  
  
"Why?" Severus suddenly said, his interest being caught.  
  
"For the same reasons - she's the descendent of two people he murdered. There is powerful magic in that alone. Also, she's the child of a wizard who had defeated him on many occasions. There is something in Harry's powers that Voldemort has found impossible to overcome and Harry would have passed that onto her," the old wizard said.  
  
Severus' eyes narrowed as he absorbed what Dumbledore said. "She could be a very dangerous little witch indeed," he murmured.  
  
* Sourced from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/VladT.htm ** Sourced from http://www.eskimo.com/~mwirkk/castle/vlad/vladhist.html (Above are sources on Vlad Tepes for previous chapter) 


	19. Chapter Eighteen, This Secret Inside of ...

Chapter Eighteen  
  
"The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief." Job 24:14  
  
The next day, the wizarding world broke out into panic. A young muggle- born wizard male had disappeared and over his house was hanging the Dark Mark. It was on the front page of all the wizarding newspapers. Severus and Hermione looked at it over the breakfast table with white faces and eyes filled with horror. The fine hair on Hermione's arms stood on end. In the photo, they could see officials from the Ministry and Padma's team working at the site.  
  
Severus and Hermione simply looked at each other without a word. They left their breakfast to get cold on the table while Hermione headed off to the Ministry and Severus to Hogwarts to see Dumbledore before classes.  
  
Hermione was owled soon after by Dumbledore to attend a meeting at Hogwarts with the rest of the team who had come back from the North Pole earlier in the year. After going over the facts of the attack and the earlier expedition, no-one had any further suggestions to make apart from waiting to see if Voldemort was spotted in Britain.  
  
"I'm not prepared to send another small team to the North Pole after the disappearance of a few of our Senior Aurors earlier in the year nor do I want the full contingent to go once more only to find Voldemort is in fact still in Britain. We are stymied, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said gravely.  
  
"So we do nothing?" Ron asked incredulously.  
  
"Either of the options we have is too risky. We will have to let the Ministry's spies do their job and inform us if they obtain any further information on Voldemort's whereabouts," Dumbledore said regretfully. Just then an owl arrived for Dumbledore and everyone waited tensely while he read it. He didn't take long. "The red Aurora Borealis has been seen at the Pole again, just as before," he announced gravely.  
  
"Another decoy?" Remus asked warily.  
  
"Possibly but we simply don't know. It leaves us with the same dilemma regardless, I'm afraid," the old wizard said.  
  
The meeting broke up soon after with little resolved.  
  
* * *  
  
A few days later, Hermione found out she was pregnant.  
  
Hermione had no idea how to tell Severus he was going to be a Daddy by Christmas. She felt a bit ridiculous. It was significant news but she felt awkward making a big deal out of it. She told him over dinner the day she found out.  
  
"Um. Severus?" she said uneasily. He merely looked up at her across the table and watched her expectantly with his black eyes. "You know how you said you wanted an heir?" He nodded, a slight frown crossing his face as though he was afraid she was about to argue with him about it. "Well, I found out today that it's sort of already on the way. Didn't take long, did it?" she added weakly.  
  
He stared at her blankly for a few seconds. "Are you sure?" he asked, his voice sounding more gravelly than usual and his cheekbones flushing with tell-tale colour.  
  
"Yeah. I went to a medi-witch today," Hermione said self-consciously.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me that you suspected you were pregnant?" he asked indignantly.  
  
"I wasn't sure. It's very early stages yet. Only a few weeks along," she replied. "I didn't want to get your hopes up in case it wasn't," she shrugged with an apologetic expression.  
  
He was silent, merely staring at her steadily which made Hermione feel even more self-conscious. Suddenly he got up and went over to her seat, pulled her up into his arms and held her close for a long time.  
  
* * *  
  
Over the next few months, several more young male wizards went missing from Britain each time with a Dark Mark over their place of residence. Padma's department was stretched thin trying to keep the incidents from the Muggle newspapers.  
  
By the time Hermione was three months along, there was talk of a second trip to the North Pole. The wizards may have been disappearing in Britain but the false Aurora's were still being seen intermittently.  
  
In the meantime Severus was driving Hermione to distraction with potions to build up her strength and relieve her symptoms, and with orders to rest and not work so hard. He was instructing House Elves in restoring the nursery wing and dragging Hermione out shopping to exclusive baby boutiques to buy quantities of expensive items, more than they could possibly need.  
  
Although Severus never discussed it with Hermione, he was terrified that she would try and follow the second mission to the North Pole too. With her pregnant, there was even more at stake than before. He acknowledged to himself that now was a particularly bad time for her to be carrying a child but nature tended to choose its own timing and he had wanted them both off the contraceptive potion as soon as they were married.  
  
Around the middle of the year, the news that Severus had been dreading finally came to him. The Ministry had decided to send a second mission to the North Pole to find Voldemort and they wanted him to go along. Severus was not dreading the mission for the sake of the danger he himself would be in but rather that he would find it impossible to stop Hermione going as well. Since she got pregnant, she had not transformed once but he wasn't willing to take even the smallest risk that something might happen while she was away at the Pole with them - not to mention that extreme cold tempretures could not be good for growing babies or comfortable for expectant mothers.  
  
He sought a private audience with Dumbledore about it soon after the mission was confirmed. "Hermione needs to stay in Britain," Severus said agitatedly, pacing in front of the old wizard's fire.  
  
"Sit down Severus, do!" Dumbledore begged and poured some scotch for the scowling man before him. "Do you think she will follow the mission again now that she's pregnant?" he asked once Severus had gulped down the burning liquid and folded himself into a chair.  
  
"I wouldn't put anything past that woman," Severus snapped, for all the world like he had not just married her himself.  
  
Dumbledore tried not to smile. "Well, there is a solution but it may take her a long time to forgive you for it," he said mildly.  
  
Severus frowned. "What's that?" he asked, looking at Dumbledore keenly from under his dark, heavy brows.  
  
"There is a location locking spell that will limit her movements to a certain geographic radius," Dumbledore explained. "It's unbreakable by the person it's put on and can only be broken by the person that effects it. Of course, it's a Dark Arts spell. It's not at all ethical, strictly speaking but it certainly would be effective."  
  
"I don't give a flying fuck about whether or not it's ethical as long as it keeps her safe in Britain!" Severus snarled.  
  
Dumbledore raised his white eyebrows. "Well, well Severus! I haven't seen you this worked up since you found out you were going to be Hermione's guardian all those years ago," he joked.  
  
"I'm still having to treat her like a child even now because she won't act like a sensible, responsible adult!" he complained bitterly, his dark eyes glowering.  
  
"She hates feeling useless," Dumbledore said quietly. "We all do."  
  
"She's more useful alive than dead!" Severus snapped, unconvinced.  
  
Dumbledore gestured to his quill and it began writing something on a parchment. "I'll give you the spell Severus but I know she will be in my office as soon as the mission leaves looking for a way to break it," he said. "And if there was a way to break it, she'd find it too. It's a good thing that there really isn't," he added with a chuckle.  
  
* * *  
  
"Ginny is going! Ginny is going and I can't?! Ginny has a little girl to take care of and I can't go?" Hermione fairly yelled at him.  
  
"Padma is going too and she has a little girl and two boys," Severus pointed out calmly.  
  
"Padma works for the Ministry, Ginny doesn't!" Hermione countered logically.  
  
"Ginny is a powerful witch," Severus said gently.  
  
"So am I!" Hermione well-and-truly shouted.  
  
"You're pregnant and you know all the other reasons Hermione. I am not going over this again!" Severus hissed at her from across the main sitting room. "We've done this to death. You're staying here! It's not just me that thinks it's the right thing - everyone else does too."  
  
Hermione spun on her heel and stormed out. Severus rubbed his forehead. He would prefer a volley of books and CDs at his head or for her to kick the furniture than this retreat from him every time she was furious. Sometimes he missed the more direct methods of Hermione's adolescent self.  
  
He had already put the spell on her. She could move freely anywhere in Britain but if she tried to leave Britain's shores, she would find it impossible. It had been a surprisingly simple spell to perform and being a Dark Arts spell, it didn't need her co-operation but it was completely binding. It would only come off when he got back from the mission and took it off or if he died.  
  
* * *  
  
A few days later, Hermione said good-bye to Severus with shaking hands and stinging eyes. It felt worse this time because she knew she could not follow and keep an eye on events. They clung to each other for a long time, neither willing to let go. She could feel their child moving now and felt its butterfly movements as they held each other, almost as though the child knew and understood and wanted to participate in the hard good-bye. It was the first time Severus had felt his child move and a hideous mixture of sudden, searing, unexpected joy and deep, stabbing fear tormented him and turned his face grey.  
  
Lily, Molly, Albert and Eddie were staying at Snape Manor as their parents were all going to the Pole. It was a blessing because Hermione was forced to think about something other than her deep panic for Severus. Once again, as he turned and left in a swirl of black robe and cloak, she felt light-headed and disconnected - as though part of her was leaving with him.  
  
The children's demands for morning tea soon distracted her however and she forced herself to enjoy them as much as she could. They were subdued as well, understanding that something serious was separating them from their Mummies and Daddies but not really comprehending what it was. 


	20. Chapter Nineteen, Oh Fragile Flame

Chapter Nineteen  
  
"ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you" Numbers 10:9  
  
Late that first night, Hermione was woken up by a House Elf. "Mrs Hermione! Mrs Hermione, sorry to wake you but there is someone here to see you. A Miss Luna, Mrs Hermione. Says it's urgent, Mrs Hermione. I can't make her go away although it's late, Mrs Hermione. Will you see her?"  
  
Hermione nodded sleepily and got up. She padded behind the House Elf to the library where a very distressed Luna was waiting. "Why aren't you at the Pole with Draco and the others?" Hermione asked, her eyes half closed and still yawning.  
  
"I've been too sick," Luna said anxiously. "I'm sorry to disturb you at this ridiculous hour but I had to tell you."  
  
Hermione knew Luna got sick when something very bad was on its way. The research Hermione had done with her upheld that empirically. "You've been dreaming again?" she asked in a hushed voice.  
  
Luna nodded. "You know how I dreamt of flames early in the year? It's not actual flames, its flame coloured hair. Whoever owns it is in danger - real danger. And that black horse? It's not a horse, it's a black unicorn with a gold horn. I saw it clearly this time. The two are connected in some way by the same source of danger. Something wants them both dead and that something is very close," she said, very lucid and succinct.  
  
Hermione stared at Luna and something clicked into place in her brain. "Lily! He wants Lily. She's the one with hair like flames and Dumbledore believes that being Harry's daughter and the grand-daughter of two people that Voldemort murdered makes her both very powerful but also most particularly dangerous to him," Hermione explained, remembering the conversation with Dumbledore.  
  
"And the black unicorn?" Luna asked steadily.  
  
"That's me, Luna. My animagus is a black unicorn," Hermione said, telling her the secret she told very few.  
  
Luna gave a single nod. Now was not the time for incredulity or dramatics, it was time for action. "What should we do next?" she asked as Hermione began walking rapidly towards the children's rooms. Luna hurried to keep up and once Hermione had checked that they were all in their beds and sleeping well, she turned back to Luna.  
  
"You need to go to the Pole and bring everyone back. It's just what we feared, the vanishing Muggle born wizards and false Auroras were a decoy to get them all out of Britain again. You need to go to Hogsbridge library first and find out exactly where the Pole is at the moment," Hermione said rapidly. "Tell everyone at the Pole what you told me. If they won't all come, ask them to at least send two powerful Aurors to help protect Lily. I have no doubt that Harry himself will insist on at least that."  
  
"Yeah and Severus will go berko for sure," Luna said without mirth just before she apparated to crash Hogsbridge Library at 2am.  
  
Hermione sat beside the children's beds, for they were all in a huge bedroom with the children's beds set up especially for their expected extended stay at the Manor. She wished that Severus had left her the wand with the black unicorn hair but he had taken it with him in case it was needed at the Pole. Her eyes drifted over to the wavy, fiery red strands of Lily's hair. They did look like flames, she thought with a sick feeling. Wakeful and alert, she watched over the children's slumber.  
  
* * *  
  
The mission arrived at the North Pole at the scheduled hour and set up camp. There was no false Aurora Borealis in the sky but that was not unusual, its appearance was intermittent. The Auror scouts came back with information that they had found a cave with evidence of recent wizard habitation less than 500m from the Pole and their camp but it was deserted. They had not approached too closely lest it be protected with dangerous charms but had seen a great deal using telescopic spells.  
  
A team of charm dismantling specialists went with the scouts to check it out. Some of these had been on the team that had dismantled the charms around the camp North of Gillamoor 10 years ago. By the time they had dismantled the heavy set of protective charms around the cave, it was a good 12 hours since they arrived.  
  
A snow owl was sent back with the news that it was now safe to approach and the rest of the team trekked over. They found a living area with stone cave walls. It contained plenty of comforts including a library of disturbing Dark Arts books. It was quite warm and dry, and due to special charms put on the place none of the heavy snow outside or freezing wind had made it inside. Beyond this room was what the charm dismantling Aurors wanted the others to see. Down a long, cold tunnel in the ice was another cave but this was made entirely of ice and was substantially larger. In one corner they found the bodies of the Aurors who had gone missing in a heap, all dead from hypothermia and perfectly preserved by the cold. Along another side was a row of metal cages with several half dead Muggle born wizards - all of the ones who had gone missing.  
  
There was no sign of Voldemort.  
  
Severus barked out orders for snowy owls to be sent to Medi-wizards and witches in Britain to prepare to receive the nearly dead wizards. While they were waiting for the stretchers to be brought from the camp to allow the patients to be apparated to the hospitals, Severus carefully examined a couple of them. There was not a mark on their bodies, unlike the poor bastards that they'd found in the Gillamoor camp or even the original camp that Severus had seen the night of his defection from the Death Eaters so long ago. They were suffering from hypothermia and starvation but did not appear to be abused beyond that.  
  
"So he wasn't up to his old tricks," Severus murmured to himself, his dark eyes narrowed as he calculated what it all meant.  
  
He supervised the apparating of the Muggle born wizards back to Britain and organized a special owl service to transport the bodies of the dead Aurors back there for burial also. He would have buried them in the snow but he knew the families would want the bodies buried back on home soil.  
  
They had all been awake for 16 hours by then and Severus was just about to order them back to camp for sleep when Luna was brought to him by a paler than usual Draco. "Tell him," Draco said hoarsely, his colourless eyes reflecting the horror he felt.  
  
Severus, who had been following Hermione's research with Luna with genuine interest and understood what he was being told particularly as it was supported by what they'd found that day, went berserk as Luna had predicted. His face went as white as Draco's own, his dark eyes blazed to life and with a terse, "tell Harry immediately," he was gone, apparated back to Britain and Snape Manor.  
  
* * *  
  
In Britain, the sun was due to come up within minutes. It was that powerful time of cross-over between night and day when magical powers were at their full strength.  
  
Severus apparated to a small sitting room away from any of the main rooms that Hermione would most likely be in. If Voldemort was in fact there, he would at least have the element of surprise on his side. He could hear strange sounds, like hollow clattering on stone floors. Creeping cautiously to the door of the room he was in, he found himself looking down the long passageway in the central section of the Manor. At one end stood a lizard man who almost looked more like a corpse than a wizard. His yellow-grey skin looked even less human than it had 10 years ago and it was crepey, like that of an old man. The glowing red eyes were still malevolent though but the frame had shrunken and looked frail.  
  
Closer to where Severus was, with its back to him facing Voldemort and causing the clattering noises was a splendid black unicorn with rolling molten eyes and a sharp gold horn glinting in the half light as it tossed its mane. Between its legs was a laughing two year old with flame coloured hair. "Ugly man!" Lily cooed with delight.  
  
It was a stand off. Voldemort did not dare approach the unicorn and the unicorn did not dare leave the child. Having learnt from his last confrontation with the creature, Voldemort did not allow himself to look at it least the beast catch his eye, and he ended up paralysed and helpless as he had before. Severus reached into his robe for the ebony wand and as he did so Voldemort saw him and disarmed him, knocking him to the ground in the process.  
  
Severus struggled to his feet again but before Voldemort could lift his wand a second time, Harry stepped out of another doorway between the unicorn and Voldemort, raised his wand and disarmed Voldemort. By that time Severus was back on his feet. Voldemort hissed "accio" and his wand flew back to his hand. In the same movement, he sent a powerful disarming spell at Severus once again who was merely knocked backward this time and staggered back against the wall, dropping the ebony wand. Voldemort opened his mouth still pointing the wand at Severus and said, "Avada."  
  
But that was as far as he got because the unicorn suddenly screamed its piercing, heartrending cry and reared, its ebony hooves kicking the air in anger and panic and fear. Voldemort gasped for breath, dropped his wand and covered his ears, falling to one knee. The universe seemed to split wide apart for the eternity of that dreadful shriek.  
  
Lily calmly picked up the dropped ebony wand, pointed it at Voldemort and said, "bad man!" in very stern tones. A red and gold light shot from the wand and surrounded Voldemort completely. When he tried to move, he found he couldn't. Lily held onto the wand and kept it trained on him, gurgling at the fun of it all.  
  
"Accio," Harry said, catching Voldemort's wand and then taking great delight in snapping it in two. It exploded in green light with a terrible noise that made them all catch their breath.  
  
A second later, the hallway was inundated with Aurors and the rest of the mission team who had all come back from the Pole and direct to Snape Manor upon orders from Ron who was in charge in the absence of Severus and Harry.  
  
Soon after, Dumbledore arrived and observed Lily cheerfully keeping the wizarding world's worst enemy easily within the power of the ebony wand. Dumbledore had reluctantly sent for the Dementors he distrusted and they arrived soon after Dumbledore, infiltrating the hallway silently.  
  
Severus stood up shakily, horribly affected by the unicorn's cry. He put one hand on the beast's shadow flank and it turned its horned head and regarded him out of one liquid fire eye. He gently coaxed it away from the bustling hallway into the peace of the nearby library. It was now just past dawn and the unicorn quickly transformed back into his wife. She looked at him, rather shell shocked but then threw her arms around him. Both of them could have so easily lost the other that day.  
  
"You were right," she said, burying her face in his shoulder.  
  
"About what, darling?" he asked gently, using a rare endearment.  
  
"Voldemort. He didn't want anything this time but revenge," she sniffed.  
  
"I think he may have wanted more than that," he said, stroking her hair. "What he wanted was to annihilate the only thing that could really stand in his path and that was the black unicorn and Lily. He wanted to destroy both those potentially deadly things before either could defeat him. He needed you both out of the way once and for all."  
  
"He was going to kill you," Hermione protested, looking up at him out of agonized grey eyes.  
  
"It was just opportune. I'm sure he would have come after me eventually but it wasn't his priority tonight," he said, his voice low and comforting, and the expression on his face unusually tender softening its harsh lines.  
  
They stood there for a long time in each other's arms but when they ventured back out into the hallway, there were still a lot of people milling around. Ginny was holding Lily and crying, and Harry was holding them both and trying to soothe his distraught wife. Lily looked solemnly at her mother and patted her comfortingly, not at all disturbed herself.  
  
Molly, Albert and Eddie had come running from the hiding place Hermione had put them in when they heard their mother's voice. Padma was not crying but her face was white and she held Molly tightly, compulsively stroking Albert's hair while Ron held onto Eddie, every freckle on his face standing out in sharp relief.  
  
"What have they done with Voldemort?" Severus asked Dumbledore, holding onto Hermione's hand firmly.  
  
"They took Voldemort back to Azkaban with them," was the old wizard's response. 


	21. Chapter Twenty, I Knew It Wasn't Ever Af...

Chapter Twenty  
  
"But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, and they shall not escape, and their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost." Job 11:20  
  
"Azkaban!" Hermione almost yelled, pacing in Dumbledore's office later that day. "Are you all mad? Why wasn't he given a Dementor's Kiss immediately?" she fumed.  
  
"Voldemort has so little human soul left that the Dementor's Kiss would have little effect," Dumbledore explained gravely.  
  
"He'll escape from there, for sure! If Sirius managed it, then Voldemort will find a way out too," Hermione ranted, barely pausing for breath. She collapsed into a chair. "It's not safe! It's not enough. He has to be destroyed!" she said, her voice finally coming down a few decibels.  
  
The others in the room looked at her rather shell-shocked. Few of them had seen her in such a temper. Severus didn't bat an eyelid as he was quite used to it. "Our problem is that we don't know how to destroy him," Dumbledore said calmly. "There is so little left of the human and wizard in him that's its difficult to say what would finish him off," he explained.  
  
"What about the wand?" Severus asked, his deep voice cutting across the silence.  
  
"Yeah, the ebony wand that Lily had," Harry said, his green eyes narrowing in concentration. "Where did she get it, by the way?"  
  
"It's our wand," Severus said quickly. "It has a core of black unicorn hair."  
  
Harry and Ron looked at Hermione with wide eyes. "That's a powerful wand," Ron said with awe.  
  
"Yes and I dare say it will end up being Lily's wand one day," Hermione said seriously, looking at the little girl who was happily playing with Fawkes on the rug in front of the fire.  
  
"Pitty birdie!" she cooed, patting the phoenix's crest. To everyone's amazement, Fawkes was quite happy for her to do so. That kind of treatment was usually below a phoenix's dignity.  
  
Luna's eyes were fixed on the little flame-haired girl with the shadow of anxiety still haunting them. Draco was holding her hand tightly as they stood closely together off to one side of the gathering. For the first time, Hermione saw how deep the bond between the two of them was. They were both usually such cool creatures when with others that it surprised her to see them sticking so close to each other.  
  
"You'll be interested to know Hermione, that Voldemort was planning to begin his experiments on Muggle-borns again once the black unicorn and Lily were out of the way," Dumbledore said mildly.  
  
"Bad man!" Lily interjected furiously, still patting Fawkes.  
  
"Yes my dear, he was a very bad man indeed," Dumbledore said soothingly.  
  
"How do you know this?" Severus asked frowning from his seat near the fire.  
  
"The reports we found with the dead Aurors' bodies. It was very careless of Voldemort to leave the corpses lying around like that without even checking them for damning evidence of his own activities and it shows his typical arrogance. From what the Aurors were able to observe using telescopic spells during the few days they had before Voldemort caught them, they were able to record something of Voldemort's future plans," Dumbledore explained seriously, his blue eyes peering around at the group over his half moon spectacles.  
  
"Which were?" Ron asked earnestly, leaning forward on his chair and his bright hair glinting in the candle and firelight.  
  
"The same old story - to eradicate Muggle-borns from the wizarding community using propoganda to recruit new Death Eaters and then rather crude genocide to get rid of the Muggle-borns themselves," Dumbledore said, sounding almost resigned.  
  
"What was the evidence the Aurors had gathered?" Padma asked from her seat next to Ron.  
  
"He already had the man-sized steel cages in the ice cave which we all saw. He was transporting them in during the few days the Aurors were able to observe him. That was a dead give-away for a start. They were also able to see some of the titles of the books in his Dark Arts library. Titles like, "Muggle-born Wizard's Inferiority - the Evidence", and "Weaknesses of the Muggle-borns" as well as copies of what looked like his own thesis based on the experiments he'd run during the Gillamoor days and earlier, when James and Lily were still alive and Severus defected," Dumbledore said gravely. "It also looked like there were several dozen volumes of scientific notes that related to his earlier experiments."  
  
"I thought they were all destroyed over ten years ago," Ginny frowned. "All his old notes and revolting theses."  
  
"The ones we could find were but it was always going to be likely that Voldemort had hidden copies in other secret locations," Dumbledore said. "The owls that are coming from the Aurors still at the North Pole now are confirming the reports we have seen from the deceased Aurors," he added.  
  
"He won't give up. He'll never give up until he's destroyed," Hermione muttered, shaking her head.  
  
"I fear you are right, Hermione," Dumbledore said gently.  
  
"Did the dead Aurors have any information on Voldemort's plans to attack the black unicorn and Lily?" Severus asked, his deep-set eyes narrowed.  
  
"No. They were only able to observe from a distance. Voldemort's cave was very well protected with powerful charms and they couldn't get close enough to see much more than what was going in and out of the place, and what he had in his front room," Dumbledore said mildly.  
  
"Why didn't they owl us the information earlier?" Severus asked with evident frustration.  
  
"I think they were waiting to gather more evidence before calling in the Ministry's charm breakers to get onto the premises," Dumbledore mused, his fingertips pressed together.  
  
"Then they were too late and we got no information at all," Severus retorted with pursed lips.  
  
"Yes," was all Dumbledore said, a note of sadness in his usually cheerful voice.  
  
"So there is nothing more we can do about Voldemort?" Hermione said impatiently.  
  
"Not for the time being," Dumbledore said. "But that doesn't mean we won't be working on it. There must be a way to hold him indefinitely or disable his magical ability permanently."  
  
* * *  
  
A few days later, Padma and her team moved into the Snape Manor to begin dismantling the Dark Arts room. Padma was very impressed by the guarding charms along the way to the entrance. "The ones in the Malfoy Manor were far more crude, if just as effective," she commented as they made their way there for the first time.  
  
"Lucius was a rather crude man," Severus sneered.  
  
Hermatica and Severus-the-first had watched the team set off with pleased and excited expressions. "Finally!" Severus-the-first had said, taking Hermatica's hand. "I believe there is great hope now, my dear," he said, his dark eyes glowing.  
  
Hermatica nodded. "He didn't turn out so bad after all, did he?" Hermatica said, having always had a soft spot for the current heir as he was so such like her own Severus.  
  
"It was that young Hermione that turned it around," Severus-the-first said emphatically.  
  
"Yes, perhaps but I think he always had it in him," Hermatica said staunchly.  
  
* * *  
  
Severus suffered a great deal during the dismantling of the Dark Arts room. First of all, because he had to face the harsh realities of what his own parents had been responsible for and none of it was pleasant. As a result, he had been forced to confront a lot of his own demons about his past. In some ways, it set him free and made him realize that not being loved by such evil people was no poor reflection on himself. Secondly, it meant his parents actions were now a matter of public record which Severus found humiliating to say the least. He knew it would take a long time to live down his parent's legacy, if it were even possible at all and his family's recent history would be a blot on the Snape name forever. Lastly, all his friends and colleagues would know the truth too and feel pity for him. Severus was not a person to take kindly to pity, regardless of the compassion that inspired it. Severus did not like feeling exposed, he preferred being secretive. In destroying the Dark Arts room, he was unable to keep the secrets he most wanted hidden.  
  
Hermione was rather fascinated by how Padma worked and spent a lot of time watching the process. The first things to go were the torture instruments. Using a rather complicated spell, Padma could tell who had died from the various instruments. As the list of names grew, Severus grew quieter and paler and thinner and more withdrawn. Hermione remembered how Draco had deferred his first Hogsbridge semester while the Malfoy Dark Arts room was dismantled. She now understood why, watching Severus go through it himself.  
  
Dumbledore himself sorted through the Dark Arts library, almost sounding pleased as he came across certain books. "Good reference books but not for general consumption," he said as he saw Hermione watching him curiously. Every now and then when he saw a certain title, a fleeting and unusual expression of anger would cross his face and the book would be reduced to cinders very quickly. Generally though, he hummed like a big, overgrown bumblebee as he sorted through them.  
  
The laboratory was the most difficult as many dangerous substances were still in the many glass beakers and pipettes and test tubes. Much of the equipment also had charms operating on them which had been placed there decades ago before Severus' parents had been dispatched by Aurors. A special team of alchemists were brought in to assist Padma. Some of them got quite excited over the sophistication of the experiments being attempted. "Severus had to get his brains from somewhere," Hermione commented to Padma as the alchemists exclaimed over the new discoveries his parents had been working on.  
  
* * *  
  
The whole process put the Manor under a dark cloud for a long time. Severus still drove Hermione crazy making sure she wasn't over-exerting herself as the baby grew and making her drink disgusting potions to build up her strength. By the time she was 6 months pregnant, she refused point blank to buy any more baby things as the nursery rooms were already overflowing with clothes, toys and equipment.  
  
Hermione started getting bossy about Severus eating properly and getting out into the sunshine. He had taken to skipping meals and holing himself up in his study as the unpleasant revelations from the Dark Arts room flowed thick and fast, day after day. She eventually told him quite bluntly that if he got all boney and pale again, he could just go and sleep in someone else's bed as she had no intention of sleeping with something that looked like a vampire. This was completely untrue and an exaggeration but it worked beautifully and Severus began eating grudgingly again which in itself improved his moods.  
  
* * *  
  
Soon after Padma had begun her work at Snape Manor, everyone was invited to Malfoy Manor for Draco and Luna's engagement party. Luna was sporting a very large, square-cut aquamarine surrounded with diamonds. The ring was so icey and pale that it reminded Hermione of Draco himself. It looked like Luna was wearing something of his essence on her finger. "Luna chose it," Draco said. "It's a family heirloom but I had it reset and added the diamonds," he explained.  
  
"It's stunning," Hermione said sincerely, secretly thinking she preferred the warmth and fire of her garnet and gold ring. "So you two finally decided to give it a go," she added with a grin.  
  
"You can talk," Draco drawled. "Besides, as you know I asked her ages ago so don't blame me."  
  
"Oh well, in the end he couldn't get rid of me so I decided we'd better make it official and be respectable," Luna said with an answering grin at Hermione. They both giggled. Severus and Draco wore identical expressions of resignation.  
  
"I wish we could get in touch with the fae below the North Pole," Luna mused as she and Hermione strolled around out in the sunshine of the grounds.  
  
"I'm not sure how you'd find them again. Apparating doesn't work unless you have a crystal," Hermione commented. Luna reached into her pocket and pulled out a pale green crystal to show Hermione. "How did you get that?" she asked, wide eyed.  
  
"Stole it," Luna said with a sly smile, putting it back in her pocket. "I don't know whether or not Draco wants to see them again so I haven't told him I've got it. If he ever brings the subject up again, I'll give it to him. They're his family really, not mine."  
  
Hermione was impressed. It was not something she would do but it didn't surprise her that Luna would have secretly taken a crystal. There was a reason why Draco and Luna were so suited, she thought with amusement. They both had very few scruples at times. 


	22. Epilogue, I Want to Hold Time

Epilogue  
  
"and his children shall have a place of refuge" Proverbs 14:26  
  
Hermione had known by the six month mark that she was definitely having twins, one boy and one girl. They were born a few weeks early on Halloween night. "What's with all the twins around anyway?" Hermione had grumbled, when she'd first found out.  
  
"Wizards and witches are prone to them," Severus had informed her, secretly rather pleased that he'd have the pleasures of both a baby boy and a girl.  
  
They decided to name the girl Charlotte after Hermione's grandmother and Severus as per his family tradition.  
  
Due to wizarding medicine, childbirth was quite easy and painless so the twins' birth was a happy event with no real trauma. Severus' dark eyes had quickly examined the tiny babies immediately after they were born and was relieved to see their mother's features. The premature babies had looked ridiculously small in Severus' large, beautiful hands and the sight had made Hermione smile.  
  
To Severus' satisfaction, they had his colouring but their mother's fine, symmetrical features. Charlotte had her mother's curly mop and Severus his father's fine, silky hair but both were dark eyed and ebony haired. Neither of them were out-going babies particularly but Charlotte had a strong will. Her first word was "no". Baby Severus was quiet and sensitive and watched everything going on around him with his large, dark eyes. Hermione could see his father clearly in the child's personality. Of course, he claimed that Charlotte was just like Hermione, particularly when she threw things in a temper.  
  
Their first year passed peacefully with Hermione back at work less than a month after the babies were born. The Ministry was happy for her to continue her research with Luna between the Ministry labs and the Snape Manor, so she got to see the babies quite regularly throughout the day. Severus spent his holidays from Hogwarts and his evenings with the babies nearby. Whilst not the type of father who would get down on the floor and play with them, he did like to have them playing in the same room where he was reading or working. Occasionally he would even give them a bottle although it was rare, the House Elves did nearly all the tedious chores of child rearing. Hermione would lecture him about holding them every day so they could bond with him. He had no objection to that if they were clean and fed, and would often pause in his work and scoop them up in his arms just for the joy of holding them.  
  
There were times that it felt surreal to be holding a beautiful baby in his arms, knowing it was his own. Other times, it felt like life had never been anything else but this and he couldn't imagine how else his life could have turned out otherwise. He had a secret soft spot for Charlotte because she reminded him so much of Hermione. Likewise, Hermione tended to indulge baby Severus because she wanted to nurture the sensitive spirit in him that had nearly been crushed out of his father.  
  
The babies' first birthday was celebrated with a huge Halloween party at Snape Manor. Severus insisted on the decorations not being too scary for the babies' sake so they had to make do with jack o'lanterns and fake cobwebs and the ghosts of some of Severus' ancestors who the babies were already acquainted with and squeeled happily at whenever the ghosts dropped by the nursery.  
  
Lily was there, still in her Chudley Canon overalls. She liked the twin babies and would play with them for hours, animating their toys for them while the adults looked on in wonder. Molly had come too of course, clutching one of the many plushies her daddy had won for her at Brighton that day. With Molly came the twins, now only a few years off Hogwarts' entrance age and already studying the first year texts as Padma told the other guests proudly.  
  
The same retinue filled the Manor as two Christmases ago just before Voldemort came back. This time however, both Bill and Charlie were on holiday and visiting home so they came along too. "And when are you two going to settle down?" they could hear Molly Senior saying to them both at one point during the party. Severus and Hermione exchanged an amused glance. "Everyone else is married and settled with children and you're the only ones who haven't! You need to both find nice girls and start a family," she continued. Luna and Hermione burst out laughing but escaped to another room so they couldn't be overheard.  
  
"But Mum!" Bill was saying. "Draco isn't married yet!"  
  
"He's getting married in two weeks as you very well know!" Molly Senior said shrilly.  
  
"I haven't told you," Luna said to Hermione. "I found out I'm pregnant."  
  
Hermione grinned and hugged her. "I'm so happy for you both. How far along?"  
  
"Only a few weeks. Won't show for the wedding thank goodness," Luna replied said nervously. "Feels weird, doesn't it? To be grown up and living in a stupidly big mausoleum with House Elves, and to be getting married and having kids. I still feel like a teenager. I don't feel old enough to be this responsible."  
  
"I know exactly what you mean. There are days I still want to run away to Hogwarts and be a teenager again," she admitted ruefully.  
  
Just then Draco walked in and came up to Luna, circling her still slender waist with one arm. "You aren't trying to put her off marriage now, are you?" he drawled, his pale eyes cool although Hermione knew he was joking.  
  
"Nah. We're just mourning having to grow up at all," Hermione replied with a grin.  
  
"It has its compensations," Severus said, coming into the room with baby Severus and Charlotte on each arm. He handed her Severus.  
  
"So it does," Hermione said, making goo-goo noises at her son as she held him close to her face.  
  
* * *  
  
Luna and Draco got married at the Malfoy Manor, near the obsidian fountain that Hermione still didn't like. Draco asked Dumbledore to officiate as he had done at Hermione and Severus' wedding.  
  
As it was not her wedding, Hermione could relax and watch the ceremony with interest. It was quite different to a Muggle wedding in that there were definitely magical elements to the ceremony. For one, when the vows were said, a silvery light glowed around them both and then joined into one entity. "And the two shall become one," Hermione murmured, as the idea struck her for the first time.  
  
"What?" Severus asked, leaning down to her as they stood in the circle formed around the couple.  
  
"And the two shall become one. It's from the Bible," Hermione said. "It's just that with wizards, you can physically see it," she observed. Severus stood close to her throughout the ceremony and she leaned in to him. In some ways, the bond had been similar when Severus had been her guardian. Again, the magical bond had been seen in light. Marriage was more encompassing however and seemed to take in the whole person, and the difference interested Hermione in a vague way.  
  
As everyone's children had been left at Snape Manor with the House Elves, the celebrations lasted far into the night. Luna and Draco set off for their honeymoon in Norway (they both preferred the cold), and Ron and Harry had pulled Hermione onto the dance floor for most of the night in between dancing with Padma and Ginny. The butterbeer flowed freely and the trio got quite giggly as they danced with their arms around each other.  
  
Much later, they were sitting around exhausted but too cheerful to leave. The delicate fairies that had lit up the garden for the party still hovered around but their light was dimmer close to dawn.  
  
"I think Lily will be the one to defeat Voldemort once and for all," Hermione said quietly, sipping some water.  
  
Harry looked at her keenly, suddenly more awake. "Do you think so?" he asked with a frown.  
  
"We all thought that you would, 'boy who lived'," she teased. "But I think your role was to keep him at bay until all the right circumstances and powers came together in little Lily," she postulated.  
  
"Do you really think he'll get out of Azkaban 'Mione?" Ron asked seriously.  
  
"Yeah," Hermione said softly. "I think he will. It might hold him for longer than we hope but it won't hold him forever. It wasn't designed for the likes of Voldemort."  
  
Severus' mouth thinned. He didn't want to think about Voldemort rising again. It had been bad enough when he had little to care about and even worse when he'd wanted to protect Hermione. Now he had little Severus and Charlotte to think of too. They were both already showing magical talent although nothing like Lily's power but he didn't want them exposed to a war the way he had been as a young man. Although they would not have the pressure to become Death Eaters hanging over them the way he had, he did not want that for his children - not on either side.  
  
"We'll prepare our children the best we can but continue to hope Azkaban does hold him. That's all we can do," Padma said sensibly. Her common sense calmed Ron down immediately, as it always did.  
  
"Yes," Ginny agreed, her brown eyes serious as she stroked her husband's unruly hair.  
  
* * *  
  
Christmas came around quickly after that and Luna and Draco hosted it at Malfoy Manor that year. "I would have thought you'd be sick of parties after the wedding," Ron joked as he arrived laden down with presents for everyone.  
  
"Well actually, it's easier. The Manor has already been cleaned from top to bottom for the wedding so there is little to do apart from catering and decorations," Luna said with a smile, hugging Padma as she arrived.  
  
New Year was held at the Snape Manor however and was a much more relaxed affair as there had been so many celebrations recently. The only real preparations that had been made were a spectacular fireworks display for midnight. The children were camped down in the nursery early on and left with the House Elves. Before that, Lily and Dumbledore had been having serious discussions sitting on the rug in front of the fire.  
  
"I think she's telling him how to run Hogwarts," Ginny said anxiously, watching her extraordinary child.  
  
"I don't think he minds," Harry replied as he watched Dumbledore's solemn expression at Lily's chatter and the twinkle of pleasure in his blue eyes.  
  
Luna discovered that sitting on the floor meant that small children assumed you were a piece of furniture. Luna had not spent much time around children and so tended to be cautious in approaching them. The children she encountered at these parties had no such qualms. They came and sat on her whenever they felt like it. Draco found it vastly amusing to see a small person solemnly sit on her legs without hesitation or much regard for Luna's own comfort. Once Luna got used to their breath-taking unselfconsciousness, she rather liked it.  
  
"I wonder what Luna and Draco's children will look like," Hermione mused aloud to Harry.  
  
"I'd say the Malfoy genes are dominant. Look at his father - as blonde as Draco," he replied.  
  
"Yeah but his mother was blonde too," Hermione pointed out.  
  
"Not as blonde as Lucius or Draco," Harry said mildly.  
  
"True," Hermione agreed.  
  
"Wouldn't it be amazing to see a child with Draco's hair and Luna's eyes?" Padma interjected.  
  
"That would look very striking," Ginny said thoughtfully.  
  
"I hate to think what the child's disposition will be like taking into account that Luna and Draco are every bit as bad as each other," Severus said drily.  
  
"Don't worry. We had misgivings about any child you produced as well Severus," Ron replied cheekily.  
  
"Just as well he had Hermione's genes to counteract the damage," Harry snickered.  
  
"Yeah, they're both really cute. Who'd have thought?" Ron said, laughing outright.  
  
Hermione shook her head at Ron and Harry, and sighed. "You two! Well, one thing is for sure. They'll both be bright," she said smugly.  
  
"Just as long as they don't go lugging huge tomes all over Hogwarts the way you did 'Mione," Harry grinned.  
  
"Yeah, boring all their friends to death with schoolwork!" Ron complained.  
  
"She saved your skins quite a few times because of what she knew as I recall," Severus said a touch frostily.  
  
"Yeah, she saved us from your detentions quite often too!" Harry said, laughing.  
  
Severus smiled thinly. "I'll have a word with her about that later," he said, his deep voice more caressing than severe as his dark eyes flicked over her.  
  
They all went outside for the countdown to midnight, standing around blazing braziers in the cold. The grandfather clock in the Manor struck Midnight and the sky exploded with brilliant fireworks. The crowd of friends and family cheered. The display went on for a good half hour. "Happy New Year" was etched across the sky in huge letters of silver and gold when it happened.  
  
Suddenly, over the woodlands on the Manor grounds, rose something familiar and horrible. The crowd went silent. A grinning skull with a serpent coming from its mouth formed from lurid green stars rose up out of the darkness.  
  
"Who dares!" Severus hissed furiously, his deepset eyes gleaming with fury in the half-light. He took out his wand and was about to stalk into the wood alone.  
  
"Severus! Wait. Hagrid, Harry, Ron, Padma, Draco, Luna and Hermione will go with you," Dumbledore called, holding up one hand commandingly. "Ginny and Remus, go and check that the children are safe and keep guard over them. The rest of us will spread out over the Manor and check all the rooms."  
  
The small group apparated into the heart of the woodlands. It didn't take long to find where the incantation had been done using tracking spells and the still bright Dark Mark as a guide. To his annoyance, the Dark Mark on Severus' arm tingled as they got closer to it. He exchanged glances with Draco in the shadows under the trees. He obviously felt the same sensation as one pale hand went to his forearm unconsciously.  
  
Of course, whoever had done it was long gone. The woods were too big to search and they couldn't do a location charm without knowing who they were looking for. Lighting up their wands, they searched for clues. They found footprints but only one set and they were lost in the dead leaves on the forest floor outside the small clearing so they could not follow them. Remus found a small shred of cloth caught by a tree root. It was fresh and was black with a strip of the same lurid green as the Dark Mark in the sky above them. "Death Eater robes," Severus said flatly, having looked at them. Draco nodded in agreement.  
  
"But only one," Hermione said, thinking aloud.  
  
"A rogue?" Luna suggested. "Just a lone nutter?"  
  
"Could be," Draco replied softly. His eyes met with Severus' again and they exchanged a knowing look.  
  
"Let's report back to Dumbledore," Harry said seriously. They apparated back to the Manor.  
  
Dumbledore examined the cloth gravely. Nothing had been found in the Manor and the children were safe. "It does appear to be a lone Death Eater but why would he or she want to operate alone with Voldemort in Azkaban?" Dumbledore said meditatively.  
  
"Maybe they know something we don't," Ron said, his freckled lips tight.  
  
"Or maybe they knew we would all be gathered here tonight and just chose to upset us for the hell of it," Padma said quite rationally.  
  
"They risked being caught with all of us here," Ginny said, having left the nursery when the others got back.  
  
"Not really. Not using the woodlands for cover. As soon as the incantation was said, all they had to do was run to a different part of the woods and apparate before we could get there," Dumbledore said gently. "I don't think we should waste anymore time worrying about it. If it was a serious Death Eater attack, something more would have happened by now," he added.  
  
"It means they are still out there; still loyal," Remus said in his quiet way.  
  
"Undoubtedly. We could never get them all. Still, if it is only one Death Eater tonight and it looks like it is then the wizarding world is the safest it has been since before Voldemort's rise over 30 years ago. They might want to remind us that they are still out there but all they can do is try and frighten us, they don't have the power to harm us any longer," Dumbledore said reassuringly.  
  
Severus and Hermione said goodbye to a subdued group of visitors in the early hours of New Year's Day. They would meet and discuss the matter again soon, Hermione knew but for now everyone just wanted to get home with their sleepy children.  
  
Severus was saying goodbye to the Hogwarts teachers who were the last to leave. Hermione went to the large, leaded windows and looked out over the grounds. The Dark Mark had faded to just pale green smoke by then and would soon be gone. She didn't know if what happened that night was a warning of things to come or just the last echo of something that had ended for good. She wondered if the black unicorn would ever run again and her eyes were drawn to the dark forest beyond their own grounds and woodlands. Only time would tell.  
  
Severus, who had spotted her by the window, guessed her thoughts. She always had a certain look on her face when she was thinking about the black unicorn - a mixture of seriousness, longing and sadness. He came and stood behind her like a tall shadow and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned around and lifted her face to his, and he kissed her. There would be time enough to worry later, she thought as his kiss deepened and he pulled her closer to himself.  
  
FINIS  
  
A/N - Chapter titles throughout from Jewel's album "Spirit". 


	23. Letter to the Readers

Hello!  
  
First of all, thank you to Aurinia and Angel of the North who were kind enough to point out some mistakes and flaws in the story. Your corrections have been made and the relevant parts re-posted. Your help has been invaluable.  
  
A special thank you to those who perservered with this story and took the time to leave reviews. Thank you for taking the story for what it is and not drawing too many comparisons to TPD. I was afraid a sequel to TPD would not appeal to the wider SS/Hr fan fic audience for various reasons and I think I've been proved correct. However, I could not imagine the sequel any other way and I had to write what was 'there'. I'm glad some of you enjoyed it. Thanks for your encouragement, it's meant a great deal to me.  
  
Snape has taken to invading my dreams at night (for the first time) so I think even though I've been ignoring him for awhile he may insist on some Addendums to the sequel and probably won't go away until they're done. Need I point out that Snape is the most demanding slave-driver of a muse I have ever had? Why is no-one surprised? Greasy bastard.  
  
Anyway, if I do get round to posting any Addendums all they will contain are scenes that fill in the gaps in both stories. Because I tend to write with a very 'tight' style, there is often a lot of detail superfluous to the plot that I leave out. Also, because I stuck to the TPD 'formula' for the sequel, although there was potential to make the story a lot longer by adding detail - I didn't. This detail may eventually become Addendums which won't add to the plot but will fill in background.  
  
For instance, I'd like to look at the intervening 10 years between TPD and the sequel, Draco and Luna's baby, Lily's future, and other bits and pieces but at this point I have no definite plans.  
  
Once again, thanks for coming along for the ride. Your company has been a pleasure.  
  
E. 


	24. Addendum 1, I'll Be Right There Baby

A/N - This was intended to be a bit of fun fluff that simply explored the next generation but it seems to have taken a direction of its own almost immediately. Don't you hate that?  
  
Addendum One  
  
"Behold, children are a heritage" Psalm 127:3  
  
"I can't believe it's been over a year since Voldemort escaped from Azkaban and nothing has happened since," Padma remarked to Hermione as they watched everyone's kids wreck one of the Snape sitting rooms.  
  
"Charlotte! Don't peg things at your brother," Hermione said firmly but Snape, standing across the room talking to Draco could tell she was trying not to laugh. Hermione definitely favoured little Severus over his sister but treated them both equally and was always fair. He knew that secretly she thought Charlotte's propensity to throw things when thwarted was funny. Snape, who had been the recipient of Hermione's own missiles on more than one occasion, did not exactly agree. Baby Severus looked mildly at his mother, not overly perturbed by his sister's antics and smiled gently at her. Hermione's eyes softened as she looked back at him. Snape hurriedly looked away before an emotion that had suddenly gripped him threatened to overwhelm him.  
  
"Hmmm. I think that Voldemort is probably gaining strength again for his next attack. He's probably recruiting new Death Eaters too, now that his former ranks have been completely decimated," Hermione replied to Padma, her grey eyes serious once more.  
  
"He wasn't in Azkaban very long," Ginny observed from where she was nursing her new born boy, James Arthur. "Barely 6 months."  
  
"Everyone knew that was going to happen," Padma replied flatly.  
  
"After all, the dementors defected from Azkaban and went back to Voldemort while we were still at Hogwarts, remember? They were never going to allow Voldemort to stay imprisoned for long," Hermione added grimly.  
  
"He's just been given the chance to rise again too many times," Ron said seriously, his freckled face furrowed with anger.  
  
"That's because no-one really knows how to destroy him for good," Ginny replied, smoothing James' dark hair and smiling into his autumn brown eyes.  
  
"I don't know why he would need time to gain strength again. Last time, Snape used the Avada Kedevra on him and the time before that it was Harry as a baby. Last time Lily only held him captive until Dumbledore could get there. He wasn't really harmed," Ron argued.  
  
Snape and Draco had wandered over by this time and were listening to the debate.  
  
Hermione reflected that she knew exactly how to destroy Voldemort and had the power to do so. The last time she had confronted him inside the skin of the Black Unicorn, she could have destroyed him forever. Then however, she had been carrying Charlotte and little Severus and to sacrifice herself at that point would have been to sacrifice them too. Her skin went cold at the thought and her sharp grey eyes darted to the small two-year olds playing on one of the priceless Persian rugs.  
  
Snape, who had been watching her profile, knew exactly what she was thinking. As though she felt his eyes on her, Hermione turned and glanced up at him. A look of understanding flashed between them and Snape's eyes held a clear warning not to mention the special powers of the Black Unicorn to anyone there. All of them now knew that Hermione's animagus was the Black Unicorn but only one or two knew about its ability to destroy Voldemort.  
  
Harry tossed the now six-year-old Lily into the air for the joy of hearing her crow in delight. There was no-one she loved as much as her daddy although Dumbledore came a close second. "We don't know what affect this little witch had on Voldemort, do we darling?" he added to Lily affectionately.  
  
"Bad man!" Lily said emphatically then went back to laughing in glee as her daddy tickled her as though Voldemort, whilst being bad, could not be as important as playing with daddy.  
  
"That's true," Draco drawled. "Goodness only knows what spell Lily used and what effect that wand could have."  
  
"Special magic," Lily confided, as her father hung her upside down from her ankles and she squealed with joy. Ginny watched them anxiously.  
  
"How is Luna?" Ginny asked Draco, as an aside.  
  
Draco smiled slightly. "She's fine. We've got a full-time mid-witch looking after her in these final stages. She just hates feeling fat," he added with one of his rare grins.  
  
"Fat?" Ginny snorted. "All she ever gets is a little bump! She never loses her figure."  
  
"Yes, I think she's very careful about that. Luna is rather vain," Draco said with amusement.  
  
"And don't you just love the fact that she is," Hermione teased, looking amused.  
  
Draco merely grinned again. "She was feeling very tired today and she's having a nap," was all he said.  
  
"Very sensible," Snape said meaningfully, glancing at Hermione who had worked right up until the final 2 weeks of her last pregnancy. "I couldn't get Hermione to rest at all with Elliot and Elizabeth."  
  
"More twins," Hermione sighed. "And I got HUGE both times," she complained grumpily.  
  
Padma laughed. "You didn't really, not considering it was twins. I felt like an elephant when I had Albert and Edward," she said, shooting the two red-haired boys an affectionate glance as they sat quietly in a corner sharing a book on rare magical creatures from the Snape library.  
  
"Well, you've certainly got your figure back now. It didn't take long," Draco said dispassionately, examining Hermione with his pale eyes. "After all, they were only born a short time ago."  
  
"Yes," Snape agreed moving slightly closer to Hermione, not really liking anyone eyeing his wife even just to pay her a compliment or make an casual observation. He placed one hand on the back of her neck rather possessively and Hermione leaned slightly against it with a small smile.  
  
Harry had put Lily down at a frown from Ginny and she had trotted off to play with Molly who looked adorable in a red gingham pinafore with her dark curls tied up in matching red ribbon. "Can Molly and I go outside and play on our brooms?" Lily asked her mother in her chirping voice.  
  
"As long as you're careful, dear," Ginny said with a slight frown.  
  
"Go on," Padma said with a smile at her daughter, Molly.  
  
The two little girls ran out of the room hand in hand. "So cute!" Hermione murmured, watching them. "I don't think any of our brood will have much talent at Quidditch," she observed with a smile.  
  
"No but they'll all be brainiacs," Harry said unequivocally.  
  
"And ruthless duelers," Ron added with a laugh.  
  
"Talking of which," Snape said smoothly, "perhaps it's time for Dumbledore to try and find out exactly what Lily did to Voldemort that night."  
  
Ginny and Harry looked up sharply, a slight frown on both their faces. "Lily already knows she's special," Harry said cautiously. "I'm not sure it's good for her at only 6 to be getting quite that much attention."  
  
"I don't get the impression that she's conceited though," Padma said thoughtfully. "Self-confident of her abilities, yes but not conceited."  
  
Harry and Ginny looked pleased at that assessment.  
  
"No, she wouldn't be so loveable if she was conceited," Hermione agreed. "I think it might be okay to let Dumbledore work with her a bit. After all, Dumbledore is not likely to spoil her much as he loves her," she suggested.  
  
Harry and Ginny glanced at each other and seemed to reach a mutual agreement. "We'll see. I'll talk to Dumbledore about it this week at any rate," Harry conceded.  
  
"Can I see Elizabeth and Elliot?" Padma asked in order to change the subject.  
  
"Of course, they're in the new nursery with their nannies," Hermione said, getting up.  
  
Ginny followed, leaving the men to watch the other children and discuss the latest Chudley Canons game and the new Quidditch teams at Hogwarts.  
  
Padma looked around the large, airy nursery with approval. It was stuffed with toys and equipment that Snape had insisted on buying brand new for the second set of twins. A team of six House Elf nannies was with them around the clock, taking turns to look after them on shift. The six chosen were very proud of their new status and bustled happily around the nursery at all hours.  
  
Hermione picked up Elizabeth and cuddled her and then handed her to Padma. Padma looked at her closely. "She's got your eyes this time Hermione," she commented, as both Charlotte and little Severus had their father's black eyes. Elizabeth blinked her long-lashed, grey eyes at Padma very solemnly.  
Ginny was leaning over Elliot and cooing. "Elliot's got your eyes too," she said. "Unfortunately, I think he's going to have your husband's nose." Elliot simply looked at Ginny coolly. "And his father's temperament," she added with a grin.  
  
"Elliot is certainly the most reserved of the four. I haven't caught him smiling yet," Hermione admitted with amusement, stroking the baby's dark, fine hair so like his father's and brother's.  
  
"Elizabeth is going to be the spitting image of you," Padma commented critically. "She has your colour hair too."  
  
"And the curls," Ginny added.  
  
"She better not have my teeth otherwise I'm getting them fixed very young," Hermione laughed, throwing back her own thick locks. "I can't believe how much James looks like his grandfather. It's eerie, little Lily and James being the spitting image of their grandparents," she added to Ginny.  
  
"I know. It is odd but I suppose with my colouring being what it is, it was inevitable," Ginny replied matter-of-factly.  
  
"And Edward and Albert look so much like the twins that it's scary," Hermione laughed again. "They look more like them every day."  
  
"I don't know how Molly escaped her father's freckles with that fine white skin but she has. Other than that, she looks just like you Padma," Ginny remarked, "even more so now that she's older."  
  
"What about little Miranda?" Padma said, shaking her head. "Isn't it weird how she looks exactly how everyone had been speculating? All that fine white hair, pale skin and her mother's dark green eyes."  
  
"I wonder what the second one will look like?" Hermione said vaguely, still stroking Elliot's hair while he looked up at her gravely.  
  
"The same, I imagine. Although, Luna's dark hair with Draco's pale eyes would look just as disconcerting," Ginny mused.  
  
"Gives me chills just to think of it," Padma admitted as she gave Elizabeth back to a nanny and they left the nursery.  
  
* * *  
  
Luna had her baby a short time later and Hermione went to visit her with a huge bunch of roses from the Snape Estate which Snape himself had ordered the House Elves to pick that morning. She also had toys for the baby.  
  
Luna was looking perfectly relaxed and groomed lying in a bed that had been specially prepared for the labour. "You look great!" Hermione said with a grin, as she handed over the roses and wrapped gifts.  
  
"Thanks," Luna grinned back. "Oh, I love these roses! You can only get these black roses* in the Balkans. I love their smell. So you think Severus would agree to let us have some shoots to plant in our gardens?"  
  
"I don't see why not," Hermione shrugged. "I'll ask him for you."  
  
"Then it's as good as done," Luna winked at her. "He's still wrapped around your little finger," she teased.  
  
Hermione snorted inelegantly. "Severus is not the type to be wrapped around anyone's finger," she said flatly, believing every word. Luna merely smiled knowingly to herself. "Where is he?" Hermione demanded, looking around the room for a cot.  
  
"One of the nannies will be bringing him shortly. I told them to as soon as you arrived," Luna replied.  
  
"How are you feeling?" Hermione asked, thinking that she looked pretty good. Then again, Luna generally did. Her hair was brushed and shiny, and her skin glowed. She was wearing a rich red, Chinese patterned night gown with magnificent silver dragons crawling all over it which was a perfect foil for her colouring.  
  
"Oh fine. With all that help from Severus with potions, it was very easy. I must say, it's handy having a master potions maker around about the place," Luna said with a laugh.  
  
"Yes, the potions work very well. I wish he had laid off a bit with all the strengthening ones in the lead up with me however," Hermione said rolling her eyes and looking disgruntled.  
  
Luna laughed at her and then held out her slender arms as the nanny House Elf arrived with the baby.  
  
"What's his name?" Hermione asked, peering into the little face. "Oh, my goodness! He's the spitting image of Draco!"  
  
"Isn't he?" Luna said with some satisfaction. "His name is Morgan."  
  
"Miranda and Morgan," Hermione said. "Nice symmetry. How is little Miranda?"  
  
An odd expression flitted over Luna's face. There was amusement there but worry and confusion too. "She's very. er. robust," Luna said carefully.  
  
"She's tiny!" Hermione said, not understanding.  
  
"Oh yes, she's very delicately built," Luna agreed. Hermione reflected that it was unlikely she'd be anything else with the parents she had. "But she has a very. robust personality," Luna clarified.  
  
"She's willful?" Hermione asked with amusement.  
  
"Er. yes. That's one way of putting it," Luna said dubiously.  
  
Hermione laughed out loud. "It's what you both deserve!" she crowed. "She's exactly like her parents!"  
  
"She'll certainly get what she wants in life," Luna ruminated aloud, ignoring Hermione's obvious glee.  
  
"Just like her parents," Hermione gasped with laughter.  
  
"Imagine if she joins forces with Lily one day," Luna speculated as the thought occurred to her for the first time.  
  
Hermione stopped laughing abruptly and stared at Luna in mild horror. "Oh no!" she groaned.  
  
"Exactly!" Luna said flatly.  
  
* * *  
  
* In case anyone is interested, there are such things as black roses. They are such a deep red that they look black. They have a very strong, beautiful scent and are picked at midnight when their scent is at its strongest and used for perfumes. 


	25. Addendum 2, Where Your Words Were My Fre...

Addendum Two  
  
"Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun." Ecclesiastes 9:9  
  
(Around the same timeframe as Addendum One - approximately 1 year after Voldemort was put in Azkaban.)  
  
Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Padma were having a girly gab session while their husbands were testing Harry's new Nimbus 3000 one Sunday afternoon on the Malfoy Quidditch pitch.  
  
Ginny was watching Harry from a window as he whizzed by with perfect control. Lily and Molly, Albert and Eddie were watching avidly. Ginny smiled as she heard Lily's thrilled crow from over 500m away. "Da-dee!" she squealed happily.  
  
"Don't you think Harry's got great muscles?" Ginny said to Hermione rather dreamily then giggled like a girl half her actual age.  
  
Hermione blinked then laughed frankly. "Do you know, I've never noticed?" she said honestly. She squinted up her eyes and tried to check out Harry from the perspective of someone who didn't think of him like a brother. "Actually, you're right. He does have nice biceps," she admitted with surprise.  
  
"Don't tell me you've never noticed what great arms Harry has," Padma said disbelievingly to Hermione. "You can't miss it!" Padma had not fallen in love with Ron because of his non-existent biceps but she had noticed Harry's nice set.  
  
"Nup," Hermione said, quite unconcerned by her lack of observation. "Harry is like a brother, for goodness sake. Who checks out their brother? Ew! Now I'm squicked!" she complained.  
  
Luna laughed her frank laugh at Hermione. "He does have nice arms," she conceded. "But I'm sorry, I still think Draco is sexier."  
  
"Of course you do," Ginny grinned. "There's something very charismatic about Draco but I knew him at school and that killed the effect for me."  
  
"Yes, he is charismatic. Too bad we all knew him when he was a nasty little nerk," Padma said matter-of-factly, winking at Luna.  
  
Luna laughed heartily. "I almost wish I had known him then now," she said.  
  
"You know, I have a feeling things would have been very different for Draco if you'd gone to Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons," Hermione said, suddenly thoughtful.  
  
"Perhaps," Luna said with her elegant shrug, flicking back her short, shining bob and refusing to take the idea too seriously. Luna lived in the present and was not inclined to analyse things long gone.  
  
"What we'd all like to know is what on earth you see in Snape!" Padma teased Hermione.  
  
Hermione glanced impishly at Padma from under a thick lock of dark hair. "Oh, I tried to hit on him very early," she admitted.  
  
Ginny and Padma stared at Hermione and Luna laughed again. "You're kidding!" Ginny exclaimed incredulously. "You hit on him first? I thought he must have being trying it on for ages initially," she breathed.  
  
"Nope. It was a case of lust at first. um. realization that he was no longer a teacher," Hermione said roguishly.  
  
All three of the women now stared breathlessly at Hermione. "No way," Ginny said, drawing it out in wonder.  
  
"Um. What exactly is it that you find to. er. lust after, if that's not too rude a question?" Padma asked curiously.  
  
"I just think he's sexy," Hermione said mischievously. "To be honest, it was an odd situation. I had just lost my parents and still saw him as a particularly nasty teacher. I didn't even see him as a person really, at that point in time. Then next thing I knew he was in Muggle clothes and in my home and I suddenly realized he was a man - a rather new thought. Who can explain sexual chemistry? Why is Ginny so bowled over by Harry's biceps when I don't even notice them? Why is Padma attracted to Ron when his freckled lips would make me incapable of kissing him? Why does Luna love Draco when the rest of us think he's a pointy-faced, skinny albino?" Hermione mused aloud.  
  
Luna gasped. "You take that back!" she said with mock indignation. "He is not! He's totally sexy," she said with a look of smug satisfaction.  
  
"I don't think I even knew why I was baiting Severus," Hermione continued, more to herself than the other women. "I just wanted to get a reaction of him. I wanted him to notice me and pay attention to me, not as a ward or ex-student either but as. me. I actually fell in lust with him long before I fell in love with him."  
  
Padma snorted. "Well, you certainly succeeded in getting his attention. You've been glued together ever since."  
  
"It was surprisingly hard," Hermione pointed out, in fairness. "He was very distant more often than not. It was so frustrating!" she added with a laugh. "It just spurred me on even more."  
  
"You never could resist a challenge," Ginny said wryly.  
  
"I loved his complexity. I loved the fact I really didn't know anything about him at all. I respected his brains which is important to me, as you know," she said pointedly. "And above all, I emphatically wanted to take off all his clothes and haul him off to bed!" she added with a laugh. "All of that was confused by all the other emotions crowding in on me with my parent's death and the threat of Voldemort at the time," she said reflectively.  
  
The other three exchanged looks of amazement. "I guess I can understand that urge," Ginny said finally with another look out the window at her messy-haired husband.  
  
"Naturally," Luna drawled in amusement. "I was very irritated at Draco when he made me wait for him."  
  
Padma merely nodded with a glance out of the window at her red-haired husband whooping happily on Harry's old Nimbus 2000.  
  
Snape, who had returned to fetch a speed monitoring gadget from the library, had unintentionally overhead most of the conversation. With burning cheeks, he apparated back outside clutching the small object but didn't go immediately to the pitch. He paced outside in the cool air until his face had returned to its normal pale colour.  
  
All of a sudden he understood Hermione's actions all those years ago when she had been a surprisingly mature adolescent. She had been churning with grief over her parent's death which had been confused by anger at their abuse and neglect. All the emotional fall out of finding out her animagus and the power it had hadn't helped, and then he had confused all these issues by sending her hormones crazy. No wonder she had been all over the place.  
  
He sat down on a nearby stone bench and an unusual and rather self- satisfied smile tugged at one corner of his lean mouth. Had she really lusted after him so early? All this time, he had thought it was mostly one- sided at the beginning; obviously not. He had always felt guilty for kissing her that night when she had been so upset. He had felt that he had taken advantage. Now he realized he had been deliberately provoked and manipulated. The level of smugness in his smile grew. He wondered if she had even known at eighteen that that was what she was doing. He suspected she had but probably not at a really fully conscious level. He didn't believe that the eighteen year old Hermione had had any idea of the power she had over his senses. He smirked. If only she'd known how easy it would have been for her to seduce him regardless of his guardianship. He had burned all night after he had pushed her away that time.  
  
For the first time, he understood his own power with Hermione from a very early stage. It felt heady, like wine. It permeated his bloodstream and made him feel light-headed. For the first time, he didn't feel a cursed man suddenly blessed with unbelievable luck in having a woman like Hermione in his life. In a bizarre way, Hermione had just unintentionally given his sense of worth and masculinity back to him. He knew that Hermione could have told him all of that and he wouldn't have believed her. He would have thought she was saying it to him to make him feel better because she was kind. There was no reason for Hermione to be kind about him behind his back however. She had been telling nothing but the blunt truth.  
  
Fortunately, Ron and Harry and Draco were too busy whizzing around on their brooms practicing maneuvers to see the changed expression on Snape's face.  
  
* * *  
  
That night, Snape and Hermione were watching Charlotte and little Severus play in front of the fire. The babies were asleep in the nursery.  
  
Severus toddled over to his mother. "Dear, you smell," Hermione said bluntly to the baby but with a gentle affection and amusement shining out of her eyes.  
  
Snape frowned at her. "Must you speak to my son like that?" he asked irritably.  
  
Little Severus merely nodded in solemn agreement with his mother. He knew his nappy was dirty and he was too little to be anything other than completely unself-conscious about it. "He knows he's got a dirty nappy," Hermione said matter-of-factly to Snape, completely unperturbed by his crankiness as per usual. "Don't you, darling?" she said, leaning down almost nose-to-nose with her favourite. Little Severus smiled happily at her. "See? He's not worried," she added to Snape.  
  
"That's because he adores his Mama," Snape said drily, still looking unimpressed.  
  
"That's because his Mama adores him," Hermione said quite truthfully to her son, smiling down into his gentle black eyes and stroking his silky dark hair.  
  
"Love Mama!" little Severus declared cheerfully before the nanny House Elf took him off to change his nappy.  
  
"I love you too, baby," she said, waving after him and blowing kisses, her usually sharp grey eyes tender.  
  
Hermione's bond with little Severus always made Snape feel uncomfortably emotional. "Why do you love Severus so much?" he asked her curiously as he watched Charlotte throw her toy across the room in a fit of temper.  
  
Hermione crossed her slim legs, propped her sharp chin in one hand and regarded Snape solemnly from her dark iron grey eyes. "Because he reminds me of you," she said simply. Snape suddenly saw the same depth of feeling that was often in her eyes when they rested on little Severus directed toward himself. Her eyes caressed his face.  
  
Snape had always found it fascinating that Hermione was capable of being so open. That kind of nakedness would make him feel unbearably vulnerable. He knew there was no need to practice Occulmency and Legilemency on her even if he had been inclined to which he hadn't. There was no need, she hid nothing. In fact, she was incapable of hiding anything. He still found that breath-taking. If she had ever really lied to him about anything important, he would have known. In well over 10 years, she never had. Not once. He supposed it was that very reason that she was able to deceive him on the rare occasions that she had in relation to the black unicorn.  
  
He leaned forward and brushed his lips across Hermione's as little Severus toddled back into the room. Little Severus gurgled in pleasure to see his parents kissing. It was a rare display as his father was reserved in front of him and his siblings usually. 


	26. Addendum 3, I'll Be Watching Over You

Addendum Three  
  
"but I have called you friends" John 15:15  
  
(Directly after Addendum Two)  
  
The next weekend saw the men back on the Malfoy pitch testing the broom once more.  
  
"One more set of tests and I think we can make the recommendation to Dumbledore to use these beauties," Harry said, examining the diamond polish on the broom's handle.  
  
"I don't think there is any doubt that it's an excellent choice for the new school brooms," Snape said drily, "if a trifle dangerous for first years." Draco glanced up at the window where he knew his wife and the other women were with the babies. His mind was still on his new son, Morgan who was only a few weeks old. "I wonder what those women talk about while we're not there?" he mused under his breath.  
  
A flicker of amusement appeared in the depths of Snape's black eyes. "I could tell you but I don't think you'd believe me," he replied shortly.  
  
Draco looked at him consideringly. "Go on then, tell us," he drawled, his pale eyes glittering in the sunlight.  
  
Snape repeated an edited version of the conversation that he had overheard the previous weekend. The parts relating to himself and Hermione were too precious and personal to share so he kept that to himself. The rest he related in his detatched, dry style.  
  
Harry and Ron stood there listening with their mouths open. "Is that what they talk about?" Ron said disbelievingly. "You're kidding! Harry's bloody biceps!" He made a fizzing noise of pure annoyance.  
  
Harry grinned like a boy and blushed a bit.  
  
"Don't look so smug, Harry. Hermione didn't even notice your precious biceps," Draco said sourly.  
  
"And Luna didn't give a fig about them either," Snape said pointedly to Draco.  
  
"Who asked them to?" Harry said with a relaxed shrug. After being a national Quidditch star, he was quite used to girls squeeing over his body. He had enough self-confidence not to mind if some girls didn't go for it, there were plenty who did. Apart from that, he thought it sweet that Ginny still giggled over him like a girl. He felt his skin go pink again.  
  
"I take it Hermione was discussing you too," Draco said perceptively, examining his old teacher closely.  
  
"Yes, she did," he said brusquely but didn't elaborate.  
  
Draco's eyes narrowed. "So I take it you're not going to share that part of the conversation," Draco said slyly.  
  
"No, I'm not," Snape said but Draco spotted the odd expression that flitted over his face for a second.  
  
Draco suddenly laughed one of his rare laughs. "Look at the smug expression on his face, boys!" he said and laughed heartily.  
  
It was such an odd sight to see Draco laugh like that that Harry and Ron stared minutely at Snape too, trying to see that flash of expression that Draco had seen. Snape had long covered it with his usual cold hauteur however.  
  
Draco kept grinning in a way that irritated Snape enormously for the rest of the afternoon.  
  
* * *  
  
When the men came in late in the afternoon, the sitting room was in an uproar. The older children had come in from the pitch earlier for their afternoon tea and were in the midst of their afternoon crazies. They were running around screaming and pretending to hex each other with their toy wands. The babies were on their mother's laps or with a House Elf nanny. Little Morgan was awake and Draco went straight over to see him. He was still so little that Draco could not spend enough time gazing at him. Miranda was there too on a rug next to her mother's chair looking astonishingly pretty with her fine, white hair done up in two tiny pigtails. She was watching the other children with great attention.  
  
Eddy, Albert, Molly, Lily and Charlotte were running around screaming at the top of their lungs in some inexplicable game that seemed to require a great deal of noise. Snape, who could not bear loud noise at the best of times, stood in the middle of the room, drew himself up to his full height and hissed, "silence!" at them.  
  
All the children stopped dead in their tracks and stared at him with their mouths open.  
  
"That school teacher thing gets them every time," Hermione commented in the sudden silence, completely unperturbed.  
  
"Geez, that brought back memories," Ron muttered sullenly. Padma grinned at him.  
  
"Gave me a cold chill," Harry agreed amiably.  
  
Charlotte ran over to her father and hugged him around his knees, as untroubled as her mother by Snape's displays of imperious impatience. As always, Charlotte's resemblance to her mother caught him off guard. He put one long-fingered hand gently on the little girl's head and she grinned happily up at him.  
  
"Guess who is Daddy's girl," Ginny said teasingly.  
  
"Here's my girl," Harry said, tossing Lily in the air for the pleasure of hearing her crow.  
  
"What a tribe!" Luna sighed, looking around at all the small people.  
  
"They are going to over-run Hogwarts in a few years time," Hermione agreed.  
  
"They will be the next generation to fight Voldemort" Harry said seriously.  
  
Hermione smiled up at him and Ron. "They'll be like us at Hogwarts, sticking together and working as a team to protect each other."  
  
"Hopefully they'll have more common sense," Snape snapped with his characteristic sneer.  
  
The trio looked at him and then at each other and shook their heads. "Some things never change," Hermione said finally with a laugh. Ron and Harry settled for scowling at Snape who was completely untouched.  
  
"I'm hoping the Houses will co-operate more in future," Padma said gravely.  
  
"Slytherins don't move in packs," Snape said disdainfully.  
  
"Oh? How would you describe the Death Eaters then?" Padma replied coolly. "Or Draco's little gang with Crabbe and Goyle? Don't be ridiculous Snape, moving in packs is exactly the Slytherin style," she added dismissively.  
  
Hermione had to admit to herself that Severus had asked for that.  
  
"We form strategic alliances, we don't move in packs," Snape said frigidly. "We leave that to the Gryffindors."  
  
"Okay, now you're getting personal," Hermione jumped in. "It was just as well Ron, Harry and I stuck together. We never could have got the better of Voldemort without each other. Besides, we didn't 'move in a pack' - we were friends. There's a difference. Strategic alliances are all very well and good but I wouldn't risk my life for a strategic alliance. I would for my friends," Hermione said with her typical Gryffindor passion, her eyes resting lovingly on her old best friends. They grinned at her and she smiled back.  
  
"Typical Gryffindor sentiment," Snape said with another sneer, turning away. Friendship was still a foreign concept to him although he was now surrounded by people that he knew he could rely on in a life or death situation.  
  
Hermione grinned at his back and winked at her friends. "I think there is every chance that this generation will co-operate across House lines. I imagine our own children will be split between Slytherin and Gryffindor. I can see Eddy and Albert being in Ravenclaw like their mother and Molly being a Gryffindor. The Houses will have to co-operate. Maybe our children will be the ones to bring that about," Hermione said hopefully.  
  
"You're a typically idealistic Gryffindor," Draco said smoothly, "but I think it would be best for our children if that were the case. I will encourage it although I'm sure both Miranda and Morgan will be in Slytherin. I want them both to have the benefit of strong ties to the other children here."  
  
"Trust a Slytherin to think strategically," Harry said with a laugh but no rancour at all.  
  
"Imagine the Slytherin strategy and cool-headedness linked to the Gryffindor passion and risk-taking. Voldemort wouldn't stand a chance," Ginny said dreamily.  
  
"More like the Gryffindor hot-headedness and rashness," Snape retorted sharply.  
  
"Snarky, snarky," Luna said reprovingly to Snape with an amused look.  
  
"That's why we love him," Hermione said calmly.  
  
"Hey, speak for yourself!" Ron grumbled.  
  
Snape came over and stood behind his wife, his beautiful white hands resting possessively on her shoulders. "I don't think there is any danger of the children not forming alliances during their time at Hogwarts, they've already begun. Molly and Lily are inseparable and I think Miranda will form a trio once she's a bit older. Eddy and Albert have the bond of twins. The others will show their preferences once they get older too. I agree with Draco, it will be an advantage if these friendships cross House lines. It can only help Hogwarts and the children individually if that happens," he said, his deep-set eyes hooded.  
  
Once everyone had left and the children were in the nursery, Hermione said to Snape, "who do you think our lot will make friends with?"  
  
"They'll have each other, first and foremost," he replied moodily, his long legs stretched out in front of the fire.  
  
"Wouldn't it be funny if Harry's boy James made friends with little Severus?" Hermione laughed. It would be ironic, she thought with glee. Snape shot her a dirty look.  
  
Hermione looked suddenly sober however and with his usual sharp perception, Snape guessed she was thinking of her own lack of sibling support during her life. "You're thinking of your own lack of siblings, aren't you?" he said quietly in a tone of voice that only Hermione ever heard. He knew she had a much older sister but she had had little to do with Hermione throughout their lives.  
  
Hermione smiled without it reaching her eyes. "You were the same," she replied softly.  
  
"That's why I wanted more siblings for little Severus and Charlotte," he said grimly.  
  
"I know," she sighed, looking away from him into the fire.  
  
Snape knew that Hermione hadn't been keen to have more children after Severus and Charlotte were born. She had only gotten pregnant again to please him but had made it clear that there would be no more after that. Although her pregnancies had been quite easy, she hadn't enjoyed being pregnant the way some women did. He hadn't minded, especially once he found out the second pregnancy was twins again. He already had far more than he ever had thought life would give him. He had felt that way with only Hermione in his life. The children had been an almost miraculous bonus.  
  
"Having children is awful," she murmured, almost to herself.  
  
Snape looked at her sharply, his black eyes narrowed as he examined her face. "What do you mean?" he rasped.  
  
Hermione looked at him surprised at his tone and realized he looked shocked at what she had said. "I don't mean that the children aren't wonderful, they are," she said, frowning as she tried to figure out how to explain what she meant. "It's just that.. when you have children it's like there's a piece of your heart walking around outside your body and you can't control what happens to them. I mean, you can't be there 100% of the time to protect them - not forever. There will be difficult things that happen to them that you can't prevent. That happens to everyone. It's awful," she muttered.  
  
He took her small hand in his large, fine-boned one and tugged on it gently. She got up to sit in his lap. She wound her arms around his neck and pressed her face against his thin shoulder, breathing in his comforting scent. He pressed his lean face against her hair. "What would have happened if you and Harry and Ron hadn't been there that time when I was the black unicorn and protecting Lily? What would have happened if Lily hadn't picked up the black unicorn hair wand that you had dropped and been able to use it on Voldemort? What would have happened if I had had to attack Voldemort as the black unicorn to protect Lily? What would have happened to Charlotte and little Severus? I was carrying them then. Chances are, they would have either died or been born as foals - their human nature gone forever before they were born. I would have had to choose between my own children and Lily. How do you make a choice like that? How will I make a choice like that if I have to one day?" She lifted her face and looked up at him, her usually dark eyes that strange silver colour they went when she was upset. Snape's throat closed over.  
  
"When I was 17 and had no-one I cared about apart from Ron and Harry who had been my whole world for years, I didn't care if I lost my human nature as the black unicorn if it would save the two people I loved and free the wizarding world from Voldemort. Now I have too much to lose. Now there is you and Charlotte and little Severus and now Elizabeth and Elliot. Not to mention all the new friends who have come into my life during the past 12 years or so. I'm afraid and I never used to be afraid. At least, not afraid like I am now," she admitted, burying her face against him once more and holding him tight. Her fingers clutched compulsively at his robes.  
  
"You can't stop living and loving just because of Voldemort. That's what he would want. In taking those chances, we are already defeating him by not allowing fear to dominate our lives," he said somberly.  
  
"I didn't know loving would be so hard," she said in a small voice.  
  
"Anything worth doing is hard," he said, gently stroking her soft hair. "That's what gives it its worth."  
  
He felt her sigh but she didn't say anything more. 


End file.
